Judges - Micah - Judges 17

“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did as he pleased.” A statement similar but not identical to “In those days there was no king in Israel, and the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”  How easy it is for us to dismiss both of these statements in the church today. We, for the most part, do not identify ourselves with the ancient Israelites and we do not need a king, for we have Lord Jesus. And yet.

And yet, this story of Micah and the Levite hits a little too close to home doesn’t it? We have to rationalize how we are not like the characters in this story in order to create a barrier around any identification with them. Surly, we do not do what is evil in the sight of the Lord. Surly, we worship correctly.

Micah is the son of an unnamed woman. He took eleven hundred shekels of silver from her and then returned them, an act for which he was rewarded by being allowed to keep the shekels and turn them into smithed images for his house of God. The stolen silver had become the center of his worship practices. He drafted one of his sons into being the priest of his temple, until a Levite came along. Micah immediately took interest – a priest from the tribe of priests to be his very own priest. Micah invited him to come and live with him and tend after his own house of God for ten shekels of silver a year. And Micah knew that he would prosper, because the Levite became his priest. Some scholars believe that at least eight of the Ten Commandments are broken in this short story, including dishonoring a parent, coveting, and taking the Lord’s name in vain, among others. There is a lack of knowledge about what truly pleases the Lord, and the writer of Judges makes no qualms about interjecting his own thoughts, this form of worship was not correct, not worthy of God. 

Often we have hard time in the church deciding what qualifies as “right” so we create a list of what is “wrong”, defining who God desires us to be and what worship should be by the negative, what worship is not and who we most certainly should not be. This story seems to be built on the principles of what we do not want our own worship to be – stolen money leading to building one’s own temple and finding a priest for hire, all with the hopes of leading to prosperity because of meticulous devotion.

How in the world did we get here? This is what the rest of the Book of Judges has been leading up to. The people have forgotten God. The people have become confused about what matters. The people are looking all around them to define what they want and need. 

We may be able to firmly say that our worship doesn’t look like Micah’s, but I think this story invites us to go deeper. 

First, why do we worship? For Micah, he thought that he could worship in order to win God’s favor. But that isn’t the point. We don’t worship for what we can get out of it, we worship because God is God and is worthy of our praise. 

We worship to proclaim that the person we value the most in our lives is God, and that no one else will ever compare to him. In fact, we value our relationship with him so much that we desire to follow him, to commune with him. That’s a pretty powerful statement that when we worship. 

Micah wasn’t clear in his own mind who was worthy of worship. In fact, it would seem that in a way he was making himself the center of worship - doing it for his own gains. 

Why do we worship? Maybe it isn’t about wanting to make God do something for us. But have you ever said, “well I just didn’t get anything out of that worship service?” It isn’t about what you get out of it, friends. It’s about what we put into it. It’s about whether we come in prepared to worship the one who is worthy of all praise. 

And when we practice putting God first here, we are more able to carry that out into the world, because we worship God when we put him first in our lives. We should worship God every day.

Second, where are you at in worship? Now I don’t mean where are we physically. Nor do I mean to say that you need to be in a church building to worship God. I mean, where are you at in your heart? For Micah, his heart was wandering and as a result, his worship was a reflection of that. 

There is an old worship song that says, “I’m coming back to the heart of worship and its all about you. Its all about you, Jesus.” 

Have we been praying throughout the week that our heart be open to worship God? Have we prayed this morning, thanking God in anticipation for what God is going to do in this place? Because I truly believe when we lay our hearts on the line before God that transformation can take place. Transformation of the world. Transformation of us. But we have to be willing to hand our hearts over. 

Third, how do we share this experience we have with God? How do we share what God means to us? How God has transformed us? For Micah, he started pulling people in to his scheme, but never really had a good reason, other than himself. First he named his son to be a priest. Then he gets a Levite off of the road.

For us, we still go out, but it isn’t about us. It is about God’s Kingdom. We are to share what God has done in our lives because we believe that God is moving in the hearts of others as well. We want them to be part of this amazing thing that God is doing. But sometimes that means setting aside our own fears to say, come and see what my God has done. 

Why do we worship? Where are you in worship? How do we share worship? I think these are the vital questions. 

But notice what question I did not ask - how do you worship? Its not about what type of music we have. Or our order of worship. Or how the church down the road is similar or different from us. Its about why we do what we do and where our heart is at.

We may have different circumstances but our world is just as confusing as that in Judges 17. And we still do what we please. We still can get confused when we make worship about what we get out of its instead of what we give unto God. Let us return to the heart of worship, friends, making it something that lifts up high God’s name in worship from the heart.