Grit and grace // Time to Start Again // Epilogue //
Judges 17-21 — “Time to start again”
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Judges 21:25
The most dangerous thing in the world is not an atom bomb, or a terrorist group, ora pride of lions, or a pile of snakes, but an ungoverned heart.
And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.
1 Samuel 8:7
The epilogue of Judges: a dot-point narrative (a tale of two Levites)
“That all Scripture is profitable does not mean that interpretation is simple”
“In all my life so far… I have never heard a single reference from pulpit or song writer or study leader or anybody else at all — never one tiny whispered sound — that related to Micah of the Book of Judges” — John Hercus, “God is God” (1971)
1/ Do-it-yourself faith
The right worship the wrong way
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. 5 And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods, and ordained[a] one of his sons, who became his priest. Judges 17:4-5
Passage: 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. 11 And the Levite was content to dwell with the man, and the young man became to him like one of his sons. 12 And Micah ordained the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah. 13 Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.” Judges 17:10-13
2/ Simulated obedience
The right reward for the wrong action
They said, “Arise, and 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. 10 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.” Judges 18:8-10
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 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 the captivity of the land. 31 So they set up Micah's carved image that he made, as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.
Judges 18:27, 30-31
Conclusion: The need for a King and the patience of God
Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? Romans 2:4
