One of the keys to academia, I’ve learned, is simply repetition. The more you say something to yourself or look at something, the better you know it. So, it is that which is repeated in Scripture that should catch our eyes. And as one looks at the Proverbs in Scripture, there is one proverb that is repeated twice in exactly the same way. The author writes, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12; 16:25). This is indeed a warning to a people who live in a culture like ours, in which the main authority upheld in the world (and, all too often, the church as well) is ourselves. We love to be the authority in our lives. We love to be the judge of our own lives. But the Bible is clear that such thought in our day leads to death.

Yet, Solomon also wrote in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9), and so we should expect that our culture is not new in looking to ourselves to be our own judges of what is right and wrong. And our expectations need look no other place than our text this morning in which we read multiple times throughout the text, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Such is the theme of our text this morning.

It seems that these two chapters in Judges, which start the third section of the book, are written to show us just how bad the spiritual situation of the Israelites had become. The author does this not by pointing at the Canaanites and how bad they were (we often like to point to the world’s sin and look over our own). No. Rather, he looks at the people of God themselves and highlights the horrifying picture of their own spiritual state.

The author gives us really three episodes that make up one story. And with each new episode there is a new character introduced so that the story begins with a man named Micah and his mother in 17:1-6, an unnamed (that is until the end) Levite is added in 17:7-13, and in chapter 8 the tribe of Dan comes into the picture. And yet, what is unchanging in each episode of the story is the clear and tragic nature of sin. Thus, this morning, as we walk through the text, I want us simply to pause along the way and see what the author wanted his own readers and us to see in this story.

The story begins with a man stealing from his mother. This was just some ordinary man as far as we know, who probably symbolizes the typical Israelite because the author draws a statement about all of Israel based on his actions. Having stolen from his mother, it is clear that he becomes afraid because she has uttered a curse upon the one who stole the silver. After all, it was 1,100 pieces of silver, and that was an extremely hefty amount. And becoming afraid, he confesses to his mother that he is the one that has stolen from her. This is surely because he hoped to avoid the curse.

His mom, it seems, hopes for the same, for she says in verse 2, “Blessed be my son by the LORD.” Now, that is much more than what we say after someone sneezes. This was her request for the Lord to remove the curse.

Thus, being overwhelmed with joy and thanksgiving to the Lord for this result, she says in verse 3, “I dedicate 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.” Thus, she dedicates the money to the Lord by making a carved image with the 200 pieces of silver. And her son takes the carved image, makes a shrine of it in the house, and makes his home a place of idol worship. Thus, the author gives his commentary in verse 6, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

I am sure we have a negative take on this as well. For though there is much talk that seems godly, this is outright sin. The mom dedicates the money to the Lord by disobeying the second commandment in which the Lord had said, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:4-6).

Yet there is more. For if you saw the text carefully, you notice an absence of 900 pieces of silver somewhere. She had 1,100 pieces that she was going to dedicate to the Lord, and yet she only used 200 to make the carved image. This is like the friendly stranger returning your wallet while only keeping eighty percent of your cash for himself. And the son, who sets up this idol as his God, chooses to worship in his own house instead of the place where God had commanded him to worship. This had been quite a serious matter to God as he had said throughout Deuteronomy 12, “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the Lord your God has blessed you. … then to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to the Lord. … Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place that you see, but at the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I am commanding you. … but you shall eat them before the Lord your God in the place that the Lord your God will choose, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, and the Levite who is within your towns. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in all that you undertake. … But the holy things that are due from you, and your vow offerings, you shall take, and you shall go to the place that the Lord will choose, and offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of the Lord your God. The blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God, but the flesh you may eat” (Deuteronomy 12:4-7, 11, 13-14, 17-18, 26-27).

This is a picture of people using godly language and voicing godly attempts, and yet they are in outright sin and rebellion before God. This is the practice, which according to verse 6, is typical of all of Israel at this time.

The story continues as we read next of a Levite coming along. He is simply a sojourner, not looking for a particular place – though the Lord had given him specific commands. And as he meets Micah, this seems to be a stroke of great luck. Micah and the Levite talk and eventually Micah offers him a little money and room and board to be his priest right there at his house and to act as a father to him. The Levite agrees and again and Micah thinks all must be well. He declares in 7:13, “Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.”

Finally, in the third episode of the story there is even more sin as the story introduces the tribe of Dan. Dan had been unable to conquer the land that they were allotted (1:34-36), and so they were seeking other land, and sent spies to look at a plot of land. Sure enough, these spies come in contact with Micah’s house and the priest there. They talk to the priest, ask him what he’s doing, and go on their way to spy out the land. They come back with a report that the land is ripe for the taking as the Sidonians, who were probably governing them, could in no way come to their aid and the people would be unsuspecting. Thus, they soon lead a group of 600 soldiers to take a piece of land the Lord had not allotted to them. But they first go to Micah’s house because they cannot resist the idols. They go into his house, take the idols, convince the priest to come with them and tell Micah to go back home when he challenges them for stealing his idols and priest. Then they go and conquer the land, renaming it Dan. And so the story ends.

But why were these events recorded? What do they teach? Well, historically they serve the purpose of showing us how the cultic center of worship at Dan came into being as a challenge to correct worship. But theologically, and practically I think, these chapters serve the purpose of teaching us about the nature of sin and what must be done about it. Specifically, they teach us that because sin is deceitful, empty, and that which will bring God’s judgment, we must war against it in our lives. I think that was the call of the author to the readers of his day and it should be the call to us as well.

Thus, in order to see this, let’s look again at some details in the story and see what the author does say about sin, for though he doesn’t provide direct rebuke of the ways of the Israelites, he subtly teaches us about the evil nature of their actions. First, I think it’s a clear lesson that …

Sin has a way of making one blinded to its presence and atrocious nature.

As we have already seen in our summary, isn’t it amazing to what degree these individuals seem to be blind to their sin. The mother shows her devotion to Yahweh by breaking the second commandment, and the son (whose name means, “Who is like God?”) shows he has no understanding of the answer to that question by creating a rival god. Then, the Levite, who should have rebuked Micah for such practices serves as a priest for God to one who is in idol worship. And finally, the tribe of Dan stop and ask the priest in 18:5 to seek God for them, to see if they would have success while setting out for a land other than that which he had specifically allotted to them. And they are ignorant of it. They might be utterly sincere in their intent to worship God, and yet they are utterly pagan in their actions. This would be equivalent to one saying he’s going to worship the Lord by creating an internet pornography site or like the individual who divorces his spouse so that he can go and serve the Lord. It may sound ridiculous to us at first, but sin indeed has a way of making us insensitive and even unaware of its presence and atrocious nature.

This is why it is not enough to examine your life as your own judge, or simply “doing what is right in your own eyes.” Rather, we need to expose ourselves continually to the Word of God allowing it to judge and expose us.

A number of years ago a lady in this church saw me squinting in an attempt to read something. At the time my income was quite low and school payments were quite high, and so she graciously paid for me to have an eye examination. I actually felt bad that she had done this because I thought she was wasting her money. After all, I had done quite well for myself reading, driving, and performing a number of other tasks with my eyes the way they were. I was pretty sure my vision was fine. I went though, thinking how I was going to apologize to her for having wasted her money as the doctor consistently asked me which was better – one or two? Finally, the doctor slid down a pair of lenses and said, “Here’s how you see?” I thought to myself, “I know, sir. My vision is fine, and now I’m going to have to go back and report this.” Then he took that lens away, slid down another, and said, “This is how you should be seeing.” To my surprise, it was remarkably different. In fact, after getting my glasses I remember thinking to myself, “So I guess you are supposed to be able to recognize people from this distance and see individual leaves on trees instead of just big green clumps.” I thought my vision was fine, and I had grown comfortable with it, thinking my eyes were doing everything they should. What I needed, though, was to be exposed to something outside of myself to show me that I was drifting toward growing comfortable with eyes that were in bad shape.

So it is with our lives and God’s Word. Sin has a way of making one insensitive to its presence and atrocious nature. After a while we can miss that sin fills our lives and grow quite comfortable with our perverse ways. We can grow to think it quite natural and common to expose ourselves to a man and a woman having sex on the television, or not reporting on our taxes that income when we are paid in cash, or living life where God is generally absent from dominating our thoughts, decisions, actions, and words. We can easily get to a point where we live life like that, maybe even while speaking much about God and being in the church. But we are anything but godly. We are walking around in complete perversion of God’s commands, completely unbeknownst to us, because we are always looking at ourselves through our own eyes which are slowly growing dull instead of exposing ourselves to the Word that cuts as deep as the division of bone and marrow.

This is the state of many in the church today who are not in the practicing of exposing themselves to the Word, meditating on it and allowing it to do its work in their lives. They might even speak of God and attempt all kinds of great things for him. They might even look successful. Micah looked successful for a while in the story and Dan did indeed conquer the land. But words of godliness and the appearance of success do not mean one is pleasing to the Lord. It can, in fact, mean the exact opposite. Thus, we see the deceiving nature of sin. And we also see more about sin.

Sin brings no deep and abiding blessing to one’s life, and it will bring ultimate judgment.

There is such a clear lack of blessing in the text. Micah is able to turn his house into a cultic shrine and (at first) make his son a priest. But soon we see that he is plagued by doubts and insecurity in his own soul. That’s why he seeks the Levite to be his priest and says in 17:13, “Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.” It’s almost as if he’s seeking anything to bring stability to his soul and nothing can do it.

The tribe of Dan face the same thing. They are heading for another land besides the one the Lord had allotted them, and yet when they see the Levite they ask him to seek God for them. It’s as if there is something in their soul that is wondering and longing for the stability that only comes in obedience to God and his commands. For sin brings no deep and abiding blessing to us, and specifically it does nothing to bring stability and security to our souls, which I think is the deep longing of our hearts.

Many are the stories of men who seemed to have all the pleasures of life and knew the misery of being tormented by their own soul. They will even seek to attach external things to their situation to try to ease this misery, as Micah does by getting this Levite. He seems to think that this will help drive out all the doubts, turmoil, and misery in his soul. And yet there is only one way, fearing the Lord and obeying his Word. It alone is an anchor for our souls. Proverbs 14:26 says that it is “In the fear of the Lord [that] one has strong confidence, and his children have a refuge.”

And yet, if this is true, that sin cannot give us that for which we most desperately long, why then do we chase after it. It seems that Lewis’s diagnosis of man is right when he writes in his preface to The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses:

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of rewards promised in the gospels [and we might add, tragic loss of blessing displayed in Judges for our sin], it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” ¹

And if the lack of deep and abiding blessing is not enough of a deterrent to sin, then we are also reminded that God’s judgment against sin is sure. Micah looks good for a while, but ultimately God’s judgment comes through the wicked tribe of Dan. And if we are deceived into thinking they will avoid judgment, the book ends with a reminder of their judgment as the author writes, “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” (18:30). They were going to know captivity. They were not going to escape the judgment of the Lord.

So, it is in the end for all. Men may prosper their entire lives on this earth, but do not be deceived, God is not mocked. Sin will be judged.

Thus, how do we then deal with sin? Well, the author shows us one way that is not correct and implies another. He shows us:

Sin cannot be dealt with by adding the appearance of godliness, but it must be battled and removed from our lives.

In the story both Micah and the Danites seek to add the Levite and his wisdom so as to be godly, but there is nothing there. In fact, as Micah and the Levite met one another, it should have been a race to see who would rebuke whom first, but they just encouraged each other in sin. The same was true with the Danites and the Levite. Yet they were encouraged no doubt by the presence and “wisdom” of each other even as they walked in sin.

The same thing can happen with us. It is often most dangerous to the church when one individual is in open sin and it is not dealt with because that leads another to walk down the same road. Sin and complacency toward sin spread. And it is a disgusting sight when the church points to the presence of other “Christians” in approving their lives and endorsing their godliness. Just because the world and many religious leaders and friends may approve of our lives does not mean that God does.

In the same way, the appearance of godliness to others does not mean that you are living a godly life. You might be in a position where others think very well of you. But you are not warring against sin but, instead, letting yourself become comfortable with secret sin. A life of godliness is not in appearance only, but in the times of secret prayer, meditation, and warring against sin. You cannot remove ungodliness simply by adding some things. It must be eradicated.

This is how the author tells us to deal with sin. He wants us to make war with sin and remove it in our lives. This is not specifically mentioned in the text this morning, but it was God’s intent from the very beginning. The Canaanites were to have been eliminated altogether. Yet they were in the land because God’s people had sinned. And God left them there as judgment and to teach this generation about war.

It is remarkably similar in our lives. We battle with sin right now because of man’s first sin. It exists because of our sin. Yet, once we’re converted God doesn’t simply remove sin altogether from our lives. He leaves it so that we might make war. He leaves it so that in warring against it we might love his mercy and be conformed to the image of his Son.

The Israelites had failed to battle sin and this was the result. The call to us is to fight. Our problem, however, is that we have failed in that which is the first necessity to fighting sin. Today, the people of God have no conception of the atrocious nature of sin and have let themselves become blinded to its presence. We have settled for apparent success and the emptiness which sin affords. But it is not until we see sin as it is and begin to make serious war against it in our own lives that we will be an honoring people to the Lord.

Therefore, I pray that as we close we might find ourselves today in repentance, determining before the Lord, by his grace, to make war against sin. To not be conformed to the world but transformed by renewing our mind to the truth of God’s Word. May we, therefore, make that clear statement of obedience this morning in coming to the table.

May his grace be with us. Amen.

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¹ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 1-2.

THE TRAGIC NATURE OF SIN - THEN AND NOW