What God Thought about Truth-Selling in Ancient Israel

Truth Was Already Being Sold in Micah’s Day

The song that you just heard is called Ballad in Plain Red, published in 2003 by Derek Webb. So is everything really for sale in the 21st century? Is that hyperbole? As I look around, I see Christian speakers charging fees for conferences, pastors requiring payment for digital sermon downloads, biblical commentaries and books about the gospel being sold, Christian bloggers monetizing their writing about Jesus through paid subscriptions and advertising, and worship artists selling the rights to sing their songs to God in church.

But this isn't new. Truth was already being sold way back in the 8th century BC, in the time of the prophet Micah, and what he wrote I think has implications for today's monetizing of ministry. So, I invite you to join me in taking out the microscope and meditating on Micah 3 .11.

The prophet is speaking of the nation of Israel. So here we go, Micah 3 .11. Its leaders give judgment for a bribe. Its priests teach for a price. Its prophets practice pagan divination for money. Yet they lean on Yahweh and say, is not Yahweh in our midst?

No disaster shall come upon us. We have three parallel lines in this part of the poem. 1. Leaders taking bribes. 2. Priests selling their teaching. 3. Prophets selling divination. If we didn't have the first line, the leaders taking bribes, we might mistake the second two lines as things that are actually okay because of how normal they have become in our current commercialized Christian climate.

But the first line is something we still universally recognize as wrong. Bribery within the justice system is just obviously sinful to everyone. Now let's get into the Hebrew. Although not everyone is in agreement on how to translate the Hebrew root Yara in line 2 of this verse, the consensus is that it has to do with instruction as the NASB says, or teaching.

So, we're talking about what the priests are doing. So, instruction or teaching, NIV goes with teaching. This is the same verb used to talk about the role of the priests in Deuteronomy 33 .10. And this is what it says, they shall teach, there it is, they shall teach Jacob your rules and Israel your law.

And there's a list of other places where this verb is used in this way. And I'm going to be linking in the description to the written version of this article so you can go and see some of these details there.

I'm not going to read all of these references here in the podcast. So, in the time of Micah, these spiritual leaders were teaching about God and his word. And this teaching had a price tag, and that was a problem.

In the phrase, priests teach for a price, the Hebrew word for price, Mechir, speaks of the simple idea of requiring payment. To be clear, these priests were not condemned by God for charging more than usual, nor for making more money than they needed to live on.

No, it was simply for monetizing their role as servants of Yahweh. God was already providing for their needs in other ways, and see that in Numbers 18. But, they were using their position to invent ways of increasing their income.

Christian history has actually used a very strong and specific word for this kind of sin, venality, which is defined as the prostitution of talents, offices, or services for reward. Don't miss the fact that in this verse, selling godly instruction is likened to the sin of taking a bribe as a judge, that is unjustly favoring those who can pay in the court of law.

So, I think it's clear from this and fair to say that God condemns the sale of Christian instruction. Okay, so let's move on to the third parallel line of the verse, where it speaks of the prophets doing divination for money.

Now, in English, we have a problem. The word divination can be a little ambiguous, and when a lot of modern people hear the word divination, they might think of some kind of general prediction performed under divine inspiration.

But in both the Hebrew original and the Septuagint translation, the words used are unambiguously negative. So, in the ancient Greek translation, the word manteuomai here refers to what we see in Acts 16 .16 with the slave girl, who was used to make money through fortune telling.

Now, in Hebrew, the word kasam is exclusively used in negative contexts, such as those condemning false prophets. So, for example, Ezekiel 21 .29, Jeremiah 27 .9, it was forbidden in Deuteronomy 18 .10, let me read that, There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination, kasam, or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer.

We know from 1 Kings 17 .17 that Israel was guilty of this sin. Here's what that says, They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire, they practiced divination, and sought omens, and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.

Now, before we go on, let me circle back and read the verse that we're talking about again, so we have it fresh in our minds as we continue the discussion. So, here we go, Its leaders give judgment for a bribe, its priests teach for a price, its prophets practice pagan divination for money.

Yet they lean on Yahweh and say, Is not Yahweh in our midst? No disaster shall come upon us. It's important to notice in the last line, the last parallel line, the prophets practice divination. Micah doesn't use the usual Hebrew verb for prophesy that you would expect to go along with prophet here.

Prophets prophesy, right? So, the original hearers would have been especially shocked because of how unexpected it was after the first two parallel lines to hear this. In those lines, he describes the leaders and priests doing expected things, judging and teaching, right?

And then jars the listener with the action of these prophets. Now, unfortunately, the NLT fails to reflect both the negative connotation and surprise. And he translates, you prophets won't prophesy unless you are paid.

And a couple other versions like the GNT and the ISV fail in the same way. So, there are actually two evils described in this third line of the verse. Number one, doing pagan divination. And number two, the act of selling it.

Prophets, Remuneration, and the Sin of Venality

So, how do we know that selling the work of prophets was wrong? Second Kings 5 gives us an example of how strict good prophets were about not even accepting offered remuneration for their righteous work in the story of Elisha and Gehazi.

Now, when Gehazi did what he thought was reasonable in his own eyes and accepted what Naaman offered as a payment of gratitude for his healing, the consequence was severe. And if you remember the story, the consequence was leprosy.

Now, once again, I don't want us to miss this. The evil of selling divination is something God likens to priests who sell teaching. Let's look at the last half of Micah 3 .11 now. It shows that the corruption is all the worse because it's hidden behind a show of piety.

This is what they say, they lean on Yahweh and say, is not Yahweh in our midst? No disaster shall come upon us. Some may say this sincerely and others insincerely, but either way, Micah is pointing out a dark irony.

These spiritual leaders are claiming to trust in Yahweh and they believe that he is present among them as a sign of approval of what they're doing. They reassure themselves by the outward performance of religious rituals, but the end result will be destruction.

And we know that clearly from the next verse, Micah 3 .12. Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field, Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins. So now that we've looked at the past, let's turn our eyes to the present.

The Commercialization of Ministry in the Modern Church

Have we now moved past this temptation and practice? Well, we still find non-profit organizations, authors, worship songwriters, biblical counselors, bible publishers, and many others sincerely believing that it's okay for them to be selling access to the truth they offer through their ministry of the word, and to deny people access to that same truth unless they pay for it.

We often misapply scripture to justify this practice, with phrases like, a worker deserves his wages, or how else would they make a living, or Paul said that charging money for ministry is one of my rights.

Now, without getting into all of these counter-arguments here, I would say, go check out the Dorian Principle for why these are misapplied in this context. It'll be linked in the description. And that will show how it's actually a misunderstanding of the Bible's teaching to use those arguments to defend the selling of ministry or spiritual blessing.

And we'll also be discussing those things at length later in this podcast. But what I want to say here is that in spite of our reasoning, the sincerity of monetized ministry is compromised, and God likens it to 1. A judge taking a bribe, and 2.

A prophet using pagan forms of prediction and charging money for it. Now, perhaps it's not an accident that in Judges 17, we meet a man also named Micah who instead of condemning corruption, offers a Levite money to be his priest.

Micah is a desperately confused man. He's convinced that God will bless him because 1. He has two expensive idols in his house, and 2. He paid a descendant of Levi to be his priest. The interesting thing about both Micah and the Levite is that they are well-meaning and oblivious to the evil of their actions.

The Levite is never named by the author, probably to imply that the entire priesthood has become corrupt and he represents all of them, and to highlight the degradation and lawlessness during this period where everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

So, all of this compels me to ask just a few questions here. Could it be possible that the richest, most materialistic societies in all of human history, western nations, might have a tendency to do what is right in their own eyes regarding money and ministry?

Could it be that we are partaking in our culture's serious blind spots when it comes to the commercialization of Christianity? Might we be just as confused and well-meaning as Micah and the Levite, oblivious to the evil that God sees in us?

Revelation, the Rich Young Ruler, and Jesus Cleansing the Temple

Over 2 ,000 years later, are we, the church of the 21st century, guilty of the prophet Micah's indictment? In our cultural moment, we have mostly accepted the peddling of God's word as normal. Priests teach for a price all around us.

Spiritual leaders are selling biblical teaching in many forms and contexts. Digital books full of life-giving gospel truth have price tags. Bible study software is sold. Videos to help people go deeper into the Bible are carefully guarded behind paywalls.

And there's more. But God's heart remains clear in scripture. Revelation 22 17 Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price. So, just like in Micah's time, most of us today assume we're doing nothing wrong when we turn the knowledge of God into a profitable product.

After all, seemingly everyone around us, and even those leaders we love and respect, are doing the same. Surely so many people can't be wrong, we think. And yet, every culture has its blind spots, as Christian history has shown.

How can we discover them except by returning over and over to scripture, to be informed and admonished as we discover what God desires and requires of us? Now, let's be real. As with all prophetic critiques of well-established cultural practice, people almost never respond well.

This is true of Micah's day and ours, especially when money is mentioned. And scripture has given us an example of how it often goes when someone challenges our attachment to worldly wealth and ways of amassing it.

We all know the story of the rich young ruler, and when Jesus gave him a hard assignment, he was deeply dismayed, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property. Or as Matthew 19 puts it, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

So, I won't be surprised if many who monetize ministry simply dismiss this. And I also won't be surprised if some agree and say, yes, scripture does condemn requiring payment for ministry. Instead, I should follow Jesus' instructions to give freely and rely on my master to provide for me.

But then, they go away sorrowful, because change is too hard. They agree, but it's just too hard to apply. They're too entrenched in the status quo, and there's too much money at stake. And there are so many systems in place that have made themselves part of the very fabric of our organizations, systems which would need to be painfully uprooted.

It'll probably be too uncomfortable. Tearing down idols is hard. Following Jesus is hard. And I would add, deeply uncomfortable. Especially when you have a ship that you've built up over decades until it's too big to turn.

You know, it's interesting that when Jesus entered the temple courts in Matthew 21 -12, he didn't have a nice, friendly conversation or soft-spoken debate with those who were buying and selling there.

There was no feigning of neutrality. Instead, what did he do? He drove them out and overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. So, some may not have ears to hear a message like Micah's, and perhaps Jesus will respond with a violent wake-up call in their lives, painful and jarring.

Yet, my hope and my prayer is that Western churches are not so full of money changers and sellers that the only way for change is for Jesus to resort to driving them out by force. So, let's pray for reform so that some things are considered too sacred to be for sale in the 21st century.

Instead of selling it, let's freely speak truth in love and let's honor and imitate our perfect judge, priest, and prophet who never sold his teaching, who gave his life for greedy people like me and you.