Judges Week 10 • Judges 17-18

Show Notes

Sunday, November 22nd • Beau Bradberry

"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." — Judges 18:1

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Host

Beau Bradberry

Senior Pastor

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Thanks for listening.

Well, good morning.

Glad that you guys are here with us on campus, and glad that you are joining in with us online.

If you've got your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Judges chapter 17.

As you turn there, I want to share something with you that I'm very excited about.

I think it'll add to all of our Christmas seasons.

God burdened my heart some time ago to create, to come up with a Christmas devotional.

And so, been praying about that for a while, kind of working through the details of that.

And what we're going to do as a church is we're going to make available a special Christmas

devotional starting on December 1st and running through Christmas Day, December 25th.

All right, and here's what it's going to look like.

It's going to be written by Willow Ridge family.

All right, some of us are staff, some of us are not.

And everybody has a passage of Scripture that in some way, shape, or form connects to the

Christmas story, the Christmas season.

And so, they will be writing through their own personality and their gifts, what God calls

them and challenges them to write.

And then what we will do is every single day from December 1st until December 25th is we

will make that available for you.

Now, here's how we're going to do that.

The easiest way, probably for most of us, is it'll be on Facebook.

And so, if you're following us or liked us or whatever it is with the Willow Ridge Church

Facebook page, you'll be able to get those through that.

But another way, and probably a more efficient way of getting it every single day, is Dave is

going to be sending that out in a daily email.

And so, if you're already getting the church emails, then you'll get that daily devotional

every single day.

If you currently do not get the church emails, write two things.

Number one, if you don't get it, check your junk folder, because a lot of times that's

where ours goes, unfortunately, right through the filtering system that they have.

Check there.

But if you're not getting them, email Pastor Dave at david.allen at willowridgechurch.org,

and he will get you taken care of so that you can join us and be a part of that.

And I'm excited to see what God is going to share and how God is going to use men and women

of this church to just kind of remind us why we celebrate Christmas, but not just Christmas,

but every day of our life.

And so, I'm really, really looking forward to that.

Now, before we get into our Christmas series in two weeks, we're going to wrap up over the

next couple weeks, we're going to wrap up Judges.

Now, I want to kind of explain to you, because Judges, as it's written, can feel broken,

all right?

And so, what happens, what I mean by that is Judges chapter 1 and Judges chapter 2 are

a double introduction.

So, the same thing is said twice in different ways, right?

Because they know that we need that to get it, right?

So, Judges 1, Judges 2, the same thing written in a double form so that we can get the introduction

of what's happening.

And then Judges 3 through Judges 16 tells the story of the judges.

And as you were reading this with us, like, you know what that looks like.

Like, some people, like Samson, right?

Like, we got a lot about Samson.

We got a lot of information about the details of his life.

And then other judges, it would just be a very quick snippet of them saying something like,

and this judge ruled over Israel for X amount of years.

And that's what we would see.

But what we're coming to, starting in chapter 17 of Judges, is a different kind of journey, okay?

So, from chapter 3 to chapter 16, it was written in chronological order.

So, this judge was after this judge was after this judge, and that's what we see.

But Judges 17 through the end of it is not going to be that way.

And what it's going to help us kind of dig into is every single time we met a new judge, right?

We get those verses, and Israel did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord.

And we could speak to general instances of what that looked like.

So, we talked about idolatry and rebellion and what that begins to look like as God's people abandon their faith to pursue other things.

But there's not necessarily, outside of the life of the particular judge, a whole lot of stories that help explain what that looks like in Israel.

Like, how does that practically play out?

So, starting in chapter 17, what we are going to see is the individuals in Israel, their sin, their sin pattern, and what that looks like.

So, that we can get some more clarity to what does it mean that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

And what we're going to see from this is we're going to see kind of a theme that is arched.

I feel like it culminated a lot in the life of Samson is this concept of Israel and compromise.

That that's what we find, that time and time again, God's people, in spite of knowing God's standard for them,

God's people, in spite of knowing who God is, they compromised and they compromised and they compromised.

And when they compromised, short of God's standard, that's the sin that they commit.

And so, we're going to get to see what some of that looks like in Israel.

But again, like, we don't want to just cast the stones at Israel from our 2020 perspective and think, man, we're not that bad.

We've got it all figured out because what we'll find is the same dysfunction of the sin of their heart, right?

That's the same dysfunction of the sin of the heart that you and I, that we wrestle with, that we battle with.

And it's going to come out of this notion of compromise.

And that's hard for us, right?

Because compromise is generally a positive thing.

Like, my wife is here in the service with us this morning.

And what I've learned in a marriage, right, what I've learned in parenting, right, is that we work toward compromise.

I've got my perspective.

She's got her perspective.

We come at this.

And then we compromise for the path going forward of what's best for our family.

And so, what we can see oftentimes in our spiritual walk is that we approach God the exact same way, right?

Well, God, I've got my perspective.

God, I've got my standard.

But our perspective, in light of the grace of God of who he is, our standard in light of the same, we have to understand that ours is broken.

That every part of who we are in creation is broken.

That the only thing that's not broken is the creator.

So, anytime we bring compromise into this with the Lord, right, we are in sin.

And this is what we see with Israel.

So, let's jump right in.

Chapter 17, verse 1.

It says,

There was a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah.

And he said to his mother,

The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it into my ears.

Behold, the silver is with me.

I took it.

All right.

So, here's what we're going to be introduced to this guy named Micah and his mom.

And they are going to consist of an extremely dysfunctional relationship.

A dysfunctional family.

And what they're going to tiptoe in a little bit is kind of common practices of worshiping the Lord.

But they're going to allow compromise to invade within there.

And in these first, really, two and a half verses, we begin to see this.

Right?

So, here's what happened.

Micah stole from his mom.

He stole eleven hundred pieces of silver.

Now, you can do the math.

Later on, Micah's going to offer a guy a job.

And his yearly salary is going to be ten pieces of silver.

Right?

So, Micah stole a lot of money.

Now, he hears his mom placing a curse on whoever stole the money from her.

Now, number two.

Like, that's not biblical.

Like, we as Christians don't do that.

All right?

So, here you see theft come in.

You hear mom placing a curse.

But kind of maybe in a good fear, he's like, I know what kind of crazy my mom can call down on me.

Right?

She's placing this curse.

I better come and confess and bring the money back to her.

And so, continue on in verse two.

And his mother said, blessed be my son by the Lord.

And he restored the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother.

And his mother said, I dedicated 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 two hundred 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.

So, the sinful pattern of the family is going to continue.

Son comes to mom, confesses.

Mom revokes her curse.

And instead begins to pray to God and says, hey, bless him now.

Now that he's come clean, now that he's brought this, bless him in this.

And then she takes the eleven hundred pieces of silver and says, God, I dedicate them to you.

But here's how I'm going to dedicate them to you.

I'm going to dedicate them to you by violating your standard for my life.

And so, she takes the eleven hundred and says, I give them all to you, but then puts nine hundred of them away and takes two hundred pieces and gives them to a silversmith and says, hey, make a graven image for me.

This is how I'm going to honor God.

I'm going to create an idol.

And so, verse five, 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.

So, Micah takes this statue, this idol that she's made of God, and he makes a shrine to it.

And then he brings in other gods.

And then he goes to one of his sons and says, look, I know you're not in the lineage of what God has chosen to be a priest,

but I'm going to ordain you to be our family religion priest of what we have.

So, we've got our sinful shrine to God, right?

They created an image of God to contain him in that.

We're going to get this to a second.

To bow down and worship him through this.

And then we are going to bring other gods that were here, and we're going to place them in this as well.

And verse 6 says, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

And this is this man, Micah, and his mom.

Look at verse 7.

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 after 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'm going to sojourn where I can find a place.

And Micah said to him, stay with me to be 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 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 the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as a priest.

So we're going to talk a lot about the priest in kind of the second half of this message.

But here's what's going on.

Now, this priest, he's a Levite, which means he's called by God to be a priest.

And within that, God gives some expectations and standards of where they are to be a priest.

And you're supposed to stay in your hometown.

And so he shares, right, that he has left his hometown, that he is seeking to be a priest.

He is looking somewhere else to stay.

And so Micah sees this.

Micah realizes, hey, I can give some credibility to my little family religion that we have going on here.

So, hey, buddy, if I give you some money, if I give you some clothes, if I give you a place to stay and food to eat,

can you now come no longer be God's priest, but you're now my priest?

And he's like, sure.

And this is the story of compromise.

This is what it looks like when men and women of God begin to wander away from God and God's standard for their life.

And what we find in this, in this whole concept of creating God and making these images and bow down to them,

what we see here are people filtering God.

Now, I want to explain what I mean by filtering God.

Over this past year, actually for the last maybe two or three years, Aaron and I have kind of taken on a hobby for the two of us to do together.

And we garden in our backyard.

We do spring, summer, fall, and winter all year long.

There's something growing.

Like we got a bunch going on right now.

We got lemon and collard greens and a ton of stuff that's going on in the garden.

But kind of like my thing that I like to grow is I like to grow peppers.

I like to grow hot peppers.

I like to make hot sauce out of them.

And I've been making all different kinds of hot sauce.

And the last batch that I made was some ghost pepper hot sauce.

So here's what I did.

I took this big jar that we had and I had two ghost pepper plants.

And every time that a ghost pepper would come off of the plant.

Now, I had to wear gloves because even to take them off and get them near my hands would cause my hands to burn.

And so I'd take them and I would put them in a jar and I would add vinegar and salt and seasoning to them.

And I'd let them stay in that jar and let them build until the jar was full.

And then with a mask and goggles on, right, outdoors, I boiled them, broke them down, and then continued outdoors.

And I brought a food processor out there and I blended them up and I poured them back in the jar and I put them into the refrigerator where they sat for approximately six weeks.

Just fermenting and getting all the seasoning and all the heat out of it.

And then a few days ago, I opened it for the first time.

And the smell of the heat in the jar about knocked me out, right?

So I called a neighbor down.

I'm like, hey man, will you taste this?

He loves hot sauce.

He was like, absolutely.

Nothing bothers me.

He touched it to his tongue.

Immediately he needed milk, right?

I had to get this taken care of.

But not just with the ghost pepper, but with any hot sauce, here's what you do.

The very last thing that you do, before you put it in the bottle, you filter it.

You filter it.

And whether it's jalapenos, whether it's Tabascos, whether it's habaneros, whether it's Carolina Reapers or ghost peppers, right?

When you're making hot sauce, what you do is you run it through a filter and you do it over and over again.

And each time you're tasting it.

And what's left in the filter, you throw away.

Because you don't need it anymore.

And you keep filtering the hot sauce until you get the color, the consistency, and the taste that you want.

And once you've decided, this is what I want, then your hot sauce is ready.

Ready to be eaten, given away, whatever you want to do.

You've now done what you want to do.

When it comes to filtering God, this is what we do with God.

We take God and we run Him through a filter of what we've determined.

So that we can eliminate all of the things that we don't like, that we disagree with, that make us uncomfortable, that we don't understand, or that we don't know about.

And we take all of these things that were there and we cast them to the side until what we have is contained in a nice, pretty package, the image of God that we want.

And so when Micah and his mom, when they make this idol, this is exactly what they are doing.

I read a story that it was customary during the time of the Israelites for them during a season of crops.

What they would do is they would make an idol of the crop that they wanted to grow.

And they would place it down before them.

And they would address, so let's say it's corn.

So they'd have a statue of corn that was there.

And then they would address it like the corn was the Lord.

Because for them, what benefited them was for the corn to grow.

And so time and time again, they would say, this is not what I need.

This is what I want.

So this is what I will form God to be like.

When we read the second commandment, when it says, you shall not make a graven image into worship, God's not just talking about the little gods of other religions.

He's saying, even when it's me, do not make an image out of me that you can try to use to control and manipulate.

Because you and I, I don't care how artistic we are.

We cannot take the full capacity of God and place it into a physical image.

And when we do that, what we're doing is trying to control, to use, and to manipulate God.

So the question I have for us this morning is, do we do this?

Do we do this?

And on the surface, no.

Like, that's crazy.

Like, no one walks into anyone's house and they're like, oh, by the way, you haven't been here before.

Here's my dining room.

Here's my living room.

Here's our idol of Jesus.

Right?

Like, we don't do that, right?

But practically speaking, we do.

Practically speaking, in our hearts, in a spiritual sense, we filter God out of who he fully is so that we can embrace the parts that we like and say, this is my God.

And so what we are doing is not only do we say, my God, but we say, my standard.

My God must fit my standard.

My God must fit my expectation.

And in that, we are no different than Micah and his mom that we see here in chapter 17.

So what does this begin to look like?

You and I, spiritually speaking, we want to pick and choose the attributes of God that we like.

And that we're comfortable with.

And so we focus on those.

This was probably about nine years ago, ten years ago.

Serving at a different church.

And I'm walking out of our worship service.

And we had a worship leader named Mark there.

And Mark had just got done leading a song to close out the service.

And it talked about the wrath of God in the song.

And I'm standing there, and we've got kind of a foyer area like we have here.

And I see someone.

I think you guys know what this feels like when they're taking that aggressive walk towards you.

Right?

Like you're like, yep, we're about to have one of those really fun conversations.

You know?

It's like, you're kind of looking around like you're looking for them.

And they're like, uh-uh, I'm coming right at you.

Right?

So she comes walking up to me.

And she said, I don't think we should do that last song ever again.

I said, cool.

Why?

Tell me why.

I'm curious.

And she said, you know, it talked about the wrath of God.

And while I know that that's in the Bible,

it's not an attribute of God that I'm comfortable with.

And so I don't think we should sing about it.

Okay.

Well, no, we're not going to do that.

And you're wrong.

And we had a conversation about it.

In one of my classes for school over the last four weeks,

we've been talking about end times, revelation, and the wrath of God.

For the last four weeks, hours of this professor who knows way, way more than I know,

walking through every verse, every word in Revelation as we talk about end times.

And he spent four weeks talking about the wrath of God.

And I want to be honest with you, like sitting there for hours and listening to it,

at some points in time, it's just like, I just want to bang my head.

Can we move on to something else?

It kind of feels like at the end of it, there's this Debbie Downer kind of moment for us.

And then last week, or two weeks ago, he said something very interesting.

And it caused me to write this down, because this isn't something that we're going to be tested on.

It's just a perspective of us as believers.

And here's what he said.

You cannot understand the love of God without the wrath of God.

Because when you understand the wrath of God,

then you understand what you deserve and how much God loves you.

You see, without the wrath of God, without something we're uncomfortable with,

that we don't like, that's like, I don't know about that.

I never understand the love that God has for me.

Because without the wrath of God, I don't know about the condition that I'm in.

Without the wrath of God, I don't know what Jesus came to save me from.

Without the wrath of God, there's this partial peace.

But I can understand the love of God, because not only did Jesus save me from the wrath of God,

Jesus took on the wrath of God in my place.

Right?

My punishment wasn't thrown away.

My punishment was poured out on him.

So without understanding the wrath of God, I can never understand the love of God.

So we can't filter him out.

We can't throw away the parts that we don't like.

We also want to revise God.

We want to revise him.

We want to use phrases, and we hear him all the time.

Well, I'm a Christian.

I know what the Bible says, but I don't know.

I just don't believe in a God like that.

You know, I know this is how God is, but I don't want to think of him that way.

I just want to think of him this way.

And in that, we try to filter God out.

We try to take God and shape God to fit our season of time and our culture.

And that's something that I think every generation picks on the current generation and says,

look at what you do as you try to mold God into a 2020 form.

But the truth is, they did that in 1920, in 1820, in 1720, in 1620, in every generation before.

And it's why when Jesus came, in those early moments in Jerusalem,

that so many who should have been looking for the Messiah,

they looked at him and said, it can't be you because you don't fit the form of what we're looking for.

You see, when we begin to filter God out,

when we begin to remove the parts that we don't like,

we miss the heart of who God is.

And what we do in that is we reveal who we really are.

We reveal our nature, our worship.

So when we try to control him, when we try to shape him,

when we try to conform him,

what we see, what you and I reveal in that moment,

is what our true heart worship is.

Because it's not about worshiping him for who he is,

it's about worshiping him for who we can manipulate,

and who we can cause,

and who we can create him to be in that moment.

Like my hot sauce,

captured in a jar,

that I can control everything about it.

And that's what God begins for us.

And Micah reveals this aspect of himself.

I want you to look back at chapter 17, verse 13.

Then Micah said,

now I know that the Lord will prosper me,

because I have a Levite as a priest.

What did Micah struggle with from the beginning?

Greed.

Greed.

He stole from his mom.

His mom.

And it wasn't a wrestle of conscience.

It wasn't a wrestle of morality.

It was out of fear of the curse that she could put on him,

that he came clean.

And what do we see here?

His true heart worship that now,

that now God will prosper him,

because now he has a priest for himself.

Micah's not seeking to glorify God.

Instead, he's seeking to glorify himself.

And what we see in the heart of Micah,

what we see in the heart of the priest

that we're going to look at in just a second,

is this sin that honestly you and I face,

and you and I battle as well.

And it's the sin of self-interest.

The sin of self-interest.

That you and I, when it boils down to it,

we have a tendency to look out for number one.

That you and I have a tendency to look out for ourselves

first and foremost.

And so what drives us is how does this affect me?

Now here's how this is difficult for us.

We get this in two different ways.

Number one, it's ingrained within our culture.

It is.

In your career, in school, in every aspect of our life.

We may cover it with other words,

but at the core value, what we make so many decisions on

is how does this affect you,

and you need to choose what will best affect you.

But also from the very beginning,

it's the bent of the sinful heart.

I'm looking out for me.

I'm looking out for what I want from the very beginning

of even Eve and Adam in the garden.

What did Satan appeal to?

What do you want?

What do you want?

What do you want?

And then when God confronts them,

what does Adam reveal?

Nah, it's her.

And it's you.

Right?

The self-interest.

So I want to give some warning signs

of the sins of self-interest for our life

that we see in this passage of Scripture.

Number one, sin of self-interest oftentimes is financially based.

Financially based.

And we're going to pick on the priest for this section.

Everybody in this is going to follow in this,

but we're going to look primarily at the priest.

In Judges 17.10, in Micah's encounter with him,

he 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.

Right?

So Micah comes to him.

Obviously, this is an impressive house

that they have to access to them this many years' wages.

This is a wealthy family.

The Levite sees it.

He's drawn toward it.

Micah says, you want some of this?

Then here's what I'm going to give you.

Ten pieces of silver.

I'm going to take care of your money.

I'm going to take care of your clothes.

I'm going to take care of your food.

I'm going to take care of your housing.

Everything that you do.

And so Micah gives this to him.

And very simply, in the weakness of the priest,

the scripture just says, and he went in.

And he went in.

He didn't ponder it.

He didn't wrestle with it.

It was financially a no-brainer for him.

Sure.

And he walks right in.

Staying with Micah went against his calling.

It went against God's word.

It had been everything that he would have been taught

from a child, as a child,

but he did not care

because it financially benefited him.

Now, I'm not going to read the whole thing,

but in verse 18,

there's going to be more of this

that comes out in the priest.

The tribe of Dan is going to encounter him.

And when the tribe of Dan meets him,

they're an Israelite tribe.

When they meet him,

they are looking for some land to call their own.

Now, if you remember all the way back to Judges 1,

I believe verse 34,

it tells us the reason why they're looking for land

is because they disobeyed God.

And so God would not give them what they wanted.

So instead, they are walking around

trying to find this land that they can take.

And they see off in the distance,

Micah and his great, glorious house of worship.

And they're drawn to it.

And so they go there and they meet the priest.

And they see all that is going

and all that is happening.

And they say to the priest,

we cannot find our land of what we have.

Can you find the land?

Can you cry out to God for us?

Is this going to be blessed by him?

And what we see in the priest,

in the sin of self-interest,

he's not God-minded first.

He's people-minded.

He's people-minded.

Well, I've got this moment.

I've got this tribe of people who are coming.

They know what they want.

I better watch what I say.

I can't cling to truth.

Or maybe he's drifted so far from it

that he's forgotten what it is to begin with.

And look at what the priest said to him.

Verse 6 of chapter 18.

He says,

Go in peace.

The journey on which you go

is under the eye of the Lord.

They say,

Will you pray for us?

No need.

God's with you.

Go.

Because that's what you really want to hear.

And when we're living in the sin

of being of self-interest,

what we become is not God-minded,

but we become people-minded.

And so they go.

They go feeling and being told

that what they're doing

is right in the eyes of God.

And so they find some land

and they want to take it.

But before they do that,

they get more men

and more weapons

and they set back out

to take the land

and they come by Micah's house again

and they think to themselves,

you know,

before we go into the land,

before we take this to ourselves,

I know that we've rebelled against God.

What we really need

more than anything else

is that idol that's in there.

Is that idol that's in there.

So they go and they take it.

And on their way out,

the priest comes running out

and he stops them.

And he says,

No, no, no, no, no.

You can't take that.

That's not yours.

But he begins to fall

into another pattern

which is the sin

of the next best thing.

The sin of the next best thing.

Look at verse 19.

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 a priest

to 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.

It's the next best thing.

Don't take that.

Oh, you want me

to come with you?

Don't take that.

Oh, I cannot just be a priest

to a family

but I can be

the priest

for a tribe.

Look what this does

for me.

And he gets farther

and farther away

from what God

had for him.

You see,

the sin of self-interest

takes us down a path.

And we're going to see

a breaking point here

from Micah.

We're going to see

a moment of reality

where he begins

to see

and understand

that this religion

that he's created

has fallen apart.

Verse 22,

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 is the matter

with you

that you come

with such company?

And he said,

you take my gods

that I made

and the priests

and go away

and what have I left?

How then do you ask me

what is the matter

with you?

And the people of Dan

said to him,

do not let your voice

be heard among us

unless angry fellows

fall upon you

and you lose your life

with the lives

of your household.

Then the people of Dan

went away

and when Micah saw

that they were

too strong for him,

he turned

and went back

to his home.

And I can imagine

that as Micah saw

them going off,

as they disappeared

into the distance,

what he saw

was the religion

that he created,

the picture of God

that he wanted

was fading quickly.

In the end,

Micah's life,

Micah's self-made religion

had failed him.

He had put his faith

in an idol

that had placed

in his home

and with a priest

that he had called

and that he had created.

And in this,

it always fails.

Church,

I need us to understand this.

The part of the fall,

the part of sin

and depravity

that affects

all of us

is this.

Everything that is created

will fail.

That's what death is.

At some point in time,

my body will fail me

and fail my wife

and fail my son

and I'll breathe

my last breath

and my heart

will stop beating

and I'll be done.

One day,

this building

will cease

to exist

as it's been created

by human hands

to do a godly work

but it is created

and when you and I,

when we take

these images

of what we want God to be

and we force them

into something,

what we see

is a created thing

that will fail,

it will fall apart

and there's one

that won't

and it's not

the created,

it's the creator.

It's the creator

that can't be captured,

that can't be bottled,

that can't be contained

and so it fades quickly

and so the people

of Dan,

they create a temple,

they put the priest

over all of it

and look at verse 31.

So they set up

Micah's carved image

that he made

as long as the house

of God

was at Shiloh.

So why does this matter?

What is verse 31?

Especially that last part.

So yeah,

so they set up the temple,

they had Micah's carved image

in there

but what does this mean?

As long as the house

of God

was at Shiloh

because here's the deal.

The presence

of God

was there

for them.

The presence

of God

had not abandoned them.

The presence

of God

was there

for them

just like it was

for all of Israel

but they didn't want

the presence

of God.

Micah didn't want it.

The priest

didn't want it.

The people

of Dan,

they didn't want it

and so instead

of seeking after

who he is

they sought

to create it

for himself.

And as we close

within this

I want us

to talk about

the tabernacle.

You can see

for Israel

the presence

of God

was not

to be found

in your home

in a statue.

The presence

of God

was not

to be found

in some

offshoot

religious practices

that you

just decided

to come

and adapt

for yourself.

The presence

of God

was not

supposed

to be found

in you

going out

and finding

your own priest

and having him here.

The presence

of God

was where

God said

he would be

which was

in the tabernacle

and so when you

would go

to worship him

and this doesn't

mean that God

was contained

because we've

seen even

from Samson

last week

that it said

the spirit

of God

was with him

but when it

came to your

interaction

with him

and my

interaction

with him

we would

not set

our eyes

on anything

else

but we would

set our eyes

on the tabernacle

and God

was there

with them

and this is

where they

could go

for them

but in order

for that

to happen

they had

to remove

their eyes

from what

they had

set in place

and they had

to focus

instead

on who

God

is

and that

he

was there

for him

this

time

of the

year

or maybe

after

Thanksgiving

right

we truly

hit into

this time

of year

of Christmas

there's a lot

of catchphrases

that we use

centered around

and based

in the thought

of God

with us

it's what we

celebrate

we'll see

songs about it

we'll talk

about the fact

of divinity

taking on flesh

God in flesh

in the form

of a child

that will

be here

with us

that will

come to

save us

in John

chapter 1

John talks

about this

and I want

to read to you

John 1 14

a verse many

of you have

heard before

John writes

and he says

and the word

became flesh

and dwelt

among us

and we have

seen his

glory

glory

as of the

only son

from the

father

full

of grace

and truth

and I want

to talk

about this

word

dwelt

because in

we have

translations

to help

us understand

and you

and I

know that

dwelt

means that

he came

in that

he lived

here

but to

get an

accurate

translation

for us

to understand

what this

means

is this

and the

word

became

flesh

and

tabernacled

among us

that he

tabernacled

that God's

very presence

of who he

is was not

to be sought

in a religious

pursuit

that it was not

to be sought

in a temple

but that when

John tells us

that God

tabernacled

among us

what that

means is

for you

and I

to see

for you

and I

to understand

for you

and I

to draw

close

to the

very presence

of God

it is not

found in

any of

these things

but it is

found in

Jesus

and in

Jesus

alone

and so

the word

became

flesh

and

tabernacled

among us

the very

presence

of God

the divinity

of God

found

in a man

free of

sin

Jesus

but that

man

is the

reason when

we talk

about the

hope that

we have

because he

did he

dwelt

among us

he

tabernacled

among us

so that

he

could grow

older

and stand

in the

wrath of

God

to take

your place

and mine

and then

he would

ascend

to heaven

and the

process

of the

tabernacle

wouldn't

end

because

see now

he would

send his

spirit

so that

he no

longer

tabernacles

among us

but he

tabernacles

with us

so that

you and

I right

now in

this moment

we live

in the

very

presence

of God

don't

try to

filter it

don't

try to

filter him

don't

try to

manipulate

don't

try to

take out

and discard

what we

don't

understand

what we

can't

comprehend

what we

don't

like

that doesn't

appeal to

us

instead

set

your eyes

on him

and him

alone

would you

pray with

me

God we

thank you

for this

story

Lord we

look at

and we

see the

brokenness

that's

found

we see

the

dysfunction

that's

found in

the home

the pattern

of sin

in the lives

of the

individuals

who were

there

but Lord

remind us

of the

redemptive

hope

that we

have

because while

this has

taken place

Lord you

are still

there

where do we

find our

lives at a

different

journeys

different phases

words

it's easy

to cast

our

stones

toward

the

micas

of the

world

who

blatantly

do

these

things

Lord

but if

we're

honest

with you

and honest

in

ourselves

Lord

we've

we've

cast

aside

the

aspects

of you

we don't

like

for

years

Lord

in our

attempt

to

control

as

creation

tries to

take over

the

creator

so

Lord

this

morning

as we

wrap up

this

service

Lord

here's

my

prayer

for

each

one

of

us

that

we

look

at

our

life

and

we

ask

the

question

where

has

compromise

invaded

where

have

we

said

that

my

faith

is

my

God

and

my

standard

and

that

we

would

leave

here

broken

for

our

sin

and

filled

with

the

hope

that

you

give

us

is

found

in

redemption

and

grace

and

life

and

meaning

Jesus

thank you

for your

love

for us

in your name

we pray

amen

where

where has

compromise

consumed

you

your

compromise

may have

been

logical

it may

have

been

beneficial

it may

have been

recommended

and

encouraged

but where

have you

compromised

know

know

that

when

we

walk

out

of

here

this

morning

because

the

grace

of

God

we

don't

have

to

live

in

the

failure

of

our

sin

and

our

compromise

but we

can walk

out

of

here

for the

glory

of

God

embraced

in

his

forgiveness

receiving

his

grace

and

living

in

his

truth

would

you

stand

as

we

worship

him

thanks

again

for

listening

to the

Willow Ridge

Church

weekly

podcast

we hope

that you

enjoyed

listening

to this

week's

message

if

you'd

like

to

learn

more

about

who

we

are

or

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