GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 18:14-21
14 The five men who had gone to spy out the land of Laish told their brothers, “Did you know that in one of these houses there are an ephod, household gods, a carved image and a silver idol? Now consider what you should do.” 15 So they turned aside there and went to the house of the young Levite at the home of Micah and greeted him. 16 The six hundred Danite men were standing by the entrance of the city gate, armed with their weapons. 17 Then the five men who had gone to spy out the land went in and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the silver idol while the priest was standing by the entrance of the city gate with the six hundred men armed with their weapons.
At first, the priest must have been shocked, so stunned he had nothing at all to say. The presence of six hundred soldiers told him he could not resist what they were doing. There was no way to slip away with anything valuable, no way to deceive them or trick them, no way he could even call out for help without being permanently silenced by a Danite spear or knife. The little detail in verse 15, “they greeted him,” may have added to his bewilderment. It would be like a thief stopping to say “hello” while he walked out of your house with your big flat screen TV. In fact, the Hebrew phrase there is that they “asked him for his peace (shalom),” as if they were asking his blessing on what they were doing. “With your permission, father?” is the sense of the statement. Out went everything he valued: ephod, idols; all of it. There was nothing he could do.
18 When they entered Micah’s house and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the silver idol, the priest said to them, “What are you doing?”
Well—there was one thing. As the details are told once again, to emphasize just what brought out the question, he asks them what they were doing, or as we would say, “What do you think you’re doing?”
19 They told him, “Be quiet. Don’t say a word. Come with us, and be our father and priest. Is it better for you to be a priest for a tribe and family in Israel than to be a priest for the house of one person.” 20 The priest was pleased and took the ephod, the household gods, and the carved image, and went with the tribe. 21 They prepared to leave, putting their children, their livestock, and their possessions in front of them.
A shush, and an offer. Before verse 20 is over, it will be the priest himself who carries off the ephod and the idols. He found a better gig! Now we see more clearly why he had left Bethlehem. Unable there to make any profit, he had gone north to seek his fortune, and now it was in his hands as he made off with the refugee tribe of Dan.
What a priest he was! He had no thought at all to the people he was called to serve. Even though the worship and the shrine were abominations, he had been called by them to serve them. He was a Levite, a student of the Law of Moses and of the Word of God. He had an opportunity to teach them all of the wonderful gospel truths of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. He could have taught them about the curse of sin crouching at our door (Genesis 4:7), about the atonement for sin that pointed ahead to Christ (Leviticus 4:3; 19:22), the gospel promise of the coming Savior (Genesis 3:15) who would be a descendant of the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10). He could have taught them the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), the promise of the resurrection (Genesis 22:5) and the joys of heaven (Deuteronomy 4:39). He could have explained about the human soul (Genesis 2:7; Deuteronomy 4:29), the angels who answer directly to the Son of God (Genesis 28:12; John 1:51), and the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:2; Numbers 24:2). He could have explained that the Savior would be God himself, born into one of the families of Israel, God who would become man, and who would come to rescue mankind from the power of sin (Numbers 24:17). But instead, this priest abandoned his people, following the flash of silver.
There are ministers today who are like this. They might belong to Christian churches that teach false doctrine, but they have divine calls from their people to serve them with the gospel. They are in a position to teach and to save souls. Perhaps some of them do not perfectly meet the requirements of a called minister from 1 Timothy 3:2-11 or Titus 1:6-9, but if he or she has a call to serve, then they are bound by that call, and they should not be opposed in their work. That doesn’t mean we need to embrace them in fellowship! It is right to challenge their doctrine when it does not submit to Holy Scripture, but it is not right to challenge their call to minister.
Pray to God that all ministers would do better than this faithless and fickle priest, who abandoned his call the moment the Danites offered him a more prestigious position. “The way of the wicked leads them astray” the proverb says (Prov. 12:26), and “he will be led astray by his own great folly” (Prov. 5:23). That’s not to say that a minister might not take a call to another church for other reasons—especially if his services are needed because he would be able to serve them well, like Titus sent to Crete (Titus 1:5) or Timothy to Thessalonica (1 Thess. 3:2). Pray that God would help your pastor to be faithful, to proclaim the truth clearly and with love. Pray that he would make Jesus Christ the center of all his preaching and teaching, to lead you to a deeper faith in your Savior.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota