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Worship God Alone
0 Plays2 seconds ago
Judges 17:1—18:31
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Transcript
Customized Christianity: A Trend?
00:00:01
Speaker
How many of you have heard of this term called customized Christianity? It's kind of caught popularity over the last four or five years. I thought I would explain it because it's becoming more popular in the news recently.
00:00:14
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Customized Christianity is where you can believe in God. You may even love Jesus. And you pray when you need something. But you also like to sprinkle in little something extra that makes your faith work a little bit better for you.
00:00:33
Speaker
That's customized Christianity. It's kind of like adding hot sauce to your grandma's recipe. It's almost unheard of. We all know what happens when you start tinkering or improving with grandma's recipe.
00:00:49
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It doesn't take long before it no longer tastes like grandma's cooking anymore. Brothers and sisters, this exactly what happens today in our passage. Israel doesn't just outright abandon God. No, they adjust Him or they tinker with Him.
00:01:06
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They add a little something to Him. They reshape Him. They mix Him in with a little bit of idolatry, something that makes their life a little easier.
00:01:18
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And what starts as customized worship ends up in full-blown godlessness. Godlessness. and I'm here to tell you today, we are living this reality in American churches all across these United States.
00:01:31
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In large part because what we've done is we started with biblical Christianity and somehow we think we need to improve on that. Tinker with it. Little less sin.
00:01:44
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Little more feeling good about ourselves. Little less suffering. Little bit more about your comfort and my comfort. A little bit less about his kingdom, lot more about my kingdom.
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Judges chapter 17 verse 6 starts this way. In those days there was no king in Israel. And everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
Self-Guidance vs. Divine Guidance
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If you have your outline today, you're willing and ready to take notes, this is the very first thing I want you to write down.
00:02:20
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When everyone leads themselves... no one follows God.
00:02:26
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When everyone leads themselves, no one follows God. This is a picture of what's happening in Judges chapter 17 and 18, and it is a picture of what's happening in this United States.
00:02:40
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Let's walk through this sobering account, this passage this morning. it's ah It's a warning for those people at that time, but it is just as relevant for you and I today. So as you turn in your Bibles to chapter 17 Judges,
00:02:53
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want you to quietly ask yourself this question, have i added anything to my worship of God?
Micah's Compromised Worship
00:03:03
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Chapter 17, verse 1 starts this way.
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There was a man named Micah who lived in the hill country of Ephraim. One day he said to his mother, I heard you place a curse on the person who stole 1,100 pieces of silver from you.
00:03:18
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Well, I have the money. I was the one who took it. The Lord bless you for admitting it, his mother replied. He returned the money to her and she said, I now dedicate these silver coins to the Lord.
00:03:35
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In honor of my son, will have an image carved in an idol cast. So when he returned the money to his mother, she took 200 silver coins and gave them to a silversmith who made them into an image in an idol.
00:03:51
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These were placed in Micah's house. Micah set up a shrine for the idol. And he made a sacred ephod and some household idols. Then he installed one of his sons as his personal priest.
00:04:08
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Verse 6 says, In those days Israel had no king, and all the people did what seemed right in their own eyes.
00:04:18
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Customized Christianity. Compromised worship. And it's no wonder that we see twice in this passage, there's no king.
00:04:31
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And they did whatever they wanted to in their own eyes. It's no wonder that they're run amok, if we can say that.
00:04:40
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It's not a political statement of the time. i want you to understand that. Yes, there was no king. But ah it's a theological diagnosis. No king meant no submission.
00:04:51
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No submission meant that they ruled themselves.
00:04:56
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God's people went about living life as if there was no God, as if there were no king.
00:05:04
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We see this play out in this first six verses here, Micah and his mother. By the way, when you read those first six verses, red flags should have been all over the place.
00:05:15
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You should have been going, wait a second, this sounds weird or strange.
The Dangers of Syncretism
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And if it didn't, well, it should
00:05:26
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Micah, right off the bat, violates two of the Ten Commandments. He steals, commandment number eight, and he dishonors his mother, commandment number five.
00:05:38
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To make it worse, his mother lies. She says, I'm going to take all of the silver, mind you, that's 1,100 pieces, and I'm going to dedicate that to the Lord, but just a few verses down, it says she only took 200.
00:05:53
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Do quick math. That's not 1,100.
00:05:57
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To add on top of that, she takes the silver, which he stole, and she's supposed to dedicate to the Lord, and she melts it down, and she makes a idol.
00:06:11
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Lowercase g, God. She goes from cursing one day to blessing the next. They make this idol. He sets up a shrine. He makes himself an ephod, which, by the way, is a vest, elegant vest is not just some trinket he puts on the shelf.
00:06:31
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I want you understand this. He's he's wearing this thing around. He's full-blown idolatry here. Compromised worship.
00:06:43
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It's all about him and his authority and what he wants to do. And good old mom is helping out.
00:06:51
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It's kind of like saying I don't need a doctor. I decided to jump on WebMD over the weekend, Google it myself. I have a diagnosis, I know what the problem is.
00:07:01
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As if we were the doctor.
00:07:05
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but When we become our own authority, brothers and sisters, we always misdiagnose the problem, do you realize that? When we put ourselves in charge, it always leads to disaster.
00:07:16
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When God is not our authority, there's only one other person that always likes to step in that spot, and that's you and that's me.
00:07:26
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And when we enthrone ourselves instead of enthroning God, it all begins to fall apart. And we see this with self-rule here. Produces stealing, lying, idolatry, cursing, and probably most of all, the worst of all, I've put down this word that you're going to want to write down, syncretism.
Compromised Leadership in Worship
00:07:46
Speaker
Syncretism, I'll spell it. s y n c r e t ism S-Y-N-C-R-E-T-I-S-M. Syncretism. What is syncretism? It's taking one thing, like Christianity, and sprinkling in something else to it.
00:08:05
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It's neither Christianity anymore, nor is it whatever that stuff is you sprinkled into it. It's something new. It's something altogether dangerous. It's like taking a clean glass of water and adding a few drops of clear poison.
00:08:19
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You don't see it, but it's really dangerous. And it's exactly what's happened here in the story of Micah.
00:08:28
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What makes it worse is the mother is saying, going dedicate this to the Lord. They know who the Lord is, brothers and sisters. They know how to worship God, but they're doing something different.
00:08:39
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They're adding in a little something else. They're taking the familiar and mixing it with the unfamiliar. They're mixing in worship of God with the worship of false idols. And we do this today.
00:08:55
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No, we don't. Yes, we do. You know many Christians I know still check their horoscope?
00:09:03
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You know many Christians I know still have the Native American tribal dream catcher hanging on their... Uh-oh. See, I see some people right now. Uncomfortable. Don't make me walk out in the parking lot.
00:09:17
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Why do we joke about that? Those are pagan things that we've mixed into Christianity. Christianity.
00:09:26
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It's like the brother or sister that you know that you go to the house and they say, oh let me get out my lucky rabbit's foot. Pagan. You're putting false hope into some man-made idol.
00:09:43
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It doesn't stop here with this private shrine that Micah sets up. Look, let's continue here in verse 7.
00:09:52
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It says, one day a young Levite who had been living in Bethlehem in Judah, he arrived in that area. That area, by the way, is Ephraim. And he had left Bethlehem in search of another place to live.
00:10:05
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And as he traveled, he came into the hill country of Ephraim. He happened to stop at Micah's house, and as he was traveling through, Micah says, where are you from? And he replied, I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I'm looking for a place to live.
00:10:18
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By the way, red flag number one, and I'll explain it. number Verse 10, stay here with me, Micah said, and you can be a father and a priest to me, red flag number two. I'll give you 10 pieces of silver a year, plus a change of clothes and food and drink, red flag number three.
00:10:38
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The Levite agreed to this, red flag number four. And the young man became one of Micah's sons. And so Micah installed the Levite as his personal priest His live-in rabbit's foot, if you will.
00:10:55
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Verse 13, and I know the Lord will bless me now, Micah says, on top of it all. Because I now have my own personal Levite server.
00:11:06
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Red flags, anyone?
00:11:10
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What is the tribe of Levi, what what were they meant to be? My Bible students here. Priests, right? ordained priests. They weren't chosen. You don't just go one day and go, you know, i'm think I'm going to pick up this guy and he's going to be my personal priest.
00:11:29
Speaker
They were selected. They were chosen. The first red flag to me as I read this and it tells me here's a Levite from Bethlehem, but he's not serving in Bethlehem. He's out walking around trying to find a job, trying to find some place to serve. And he just happens upon the house of Micah Micah says, hey, why don't you stay here with me?
00:11:51
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You can be my father, which commentary says this guy was much younger than Micah, which is strange in itself. But worse, you can be a priest to me. Then I'll pay you.
00:12:03
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Personal payment to a personal priest. Red flags all over the place here.
00:12:11
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We've taken what was something sacred and have now sprinkled in a bunch of Hypocrisy.
00:12:20
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Compromised leadership now produces compromised worship. He goes from being a Levite to the community to ah a personal worship pastor in your home.
From Personal to National Idolatry
00:12:32
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Why go to First Baptist Cameron when I can just stay at my house? I've got my own personal pastor right there. No reason to leave this place.
00:12:42
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Why go in person when I can just turn it online? I see Patrick right there online every Sunday.
00:12:50
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It's like visiting the mechanic who, when inspecting your car, realizes your brake lines are cut, but he doesn't tell you because he doesn't want to hurt your feelings. He doesn't want to make you upset.
00:13:02
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That guy's not helping you out. He's hurting you. Do you know many pastors we have that are not preaching true Christianity, biblical Christianity?
00:13:13
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Because they want you to feel good. They don't want you feel like you must suffer.
00:13:19
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They want you to be healthy and wealthy and prosperous.
00:13:24
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Boy, I would love to preach a sermon like that to you guys. It would do me so good to tell you everything's going to be great. Just keep living the way you want to live. You don't need to follow the Bible what the Bible says.
00:13:38
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But I wouldn't be doing you any good. Matter of fact, I'd be doing you whole lot of harm. It's exactly what this Levite is doing in Micah's house. He's doing a lot of harm
00:13:49
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Red flags all over this story. At least it should be when you read it.
00:13:55
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And this poor, compromised worship has real tragedy, real consequences. And and we'll see this here. want you jump to chapter 18 now, chapter 18 in your Bibles.
00:14:07
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And i'll I'll go back to the beginning of 18, but I want you to see how this story ends. Go all the way down to verse 21. Chapter 18, verse 21 says,
00:14:19
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So as they turned, this is the Danites, they turned and they started on their way again placing their children, livestock, and possessions in front of them. And when the people from the tribe of Dan were quite a distance away from Micah's house, the people who lived near Micah came chasing after them.
00:14:36
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And they were shouting as they caught up with the Danites. And the man of Dan turned around, and I love this interaction here, hey, what's the matter with you guys? Why are you chasing after us?
00:14:48
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What do you mean, what's the matter? Michael replies. You've taken away all the gods that I have made and my priest, and now I have nothing left.
00:15:01
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To which the men of Dan say, verse 25, you better watch what you say. I got a lot of short-tempered men around here. They might get angry. They might kill you and your family. Watch what you're saying.
00:15:16
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This is the sad state that that we're in. He's lost everything. And the only thing he has remaining
00:15:25
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should be his God. But they've taken these idols that he's cherished so much. They've stolen everything from him. The Danites have taken his idols, his priest.
00:15:38
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He runs after them. What do I have when left?
00:15:44
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Many of you this morning are in this same situation. You've compromised your Christianity.
00:15:51
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You believe something false. And I'm here to tell you, if you sit under true biblical instruction, it'll become real apparent real quick if you spend any number of Sundays here.
00:16:03
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Biblical Christianity preaches something completely different than a feel-good message all the time. It requires conviction, change, personal change into the image of Christ.
00:16:16
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It changes you from somebody who struggles to read the Bible, who can't wait to read the Bible. Because it directs your life. It directs the way you think. It directs your conversations you have with your friends.
00:16:28
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Matter of fact, it introduces new friends into your life.
00:16:33
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You look no further than the fellowship that's going on here at this church. Many of you have made new, good, godly men and women friends here today. that's That's because we cherish God's word and we stick to it.
00:16:45
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Now, Michael's household here is just a very small example of of godlessness. Small example of compromised worship.
00:16:56
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The tribe of Dan, we're going to see... steals from him and it's full of irony here they steal from Micah his idol his priest and they take this and they run with it and it just gets worse it goes from a personal trouble for Micah to a national one with Dan to it eventually reshapes all of Israel look with me here beginning of chapter 18 look how starts
00:17:27
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Verse 1, now in those days because Israel will had no king.
00:17:32
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By the way, when I teach this on Saturday to the ladies, this will be one of the ones that we teach, not this exact one. But when you hear repetition, we've now seen it twice. There's no king in Israel. That should alert you.
00:17:44
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The author is doing something here. So then the tribe of Dan was trying to find a place where they could settle. For they had not yet moved into the land assigned to them when the land was divided among the tribes of Israel.
00:17:55
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So the Eshetol. And they went and scouted the land that they were to settle in. And when these warriors arrived in the hill country of Ibram, they came to Micah's house, just like the Levite did.
00:18:11
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And they decided to spend the night there. And while they were at Micah's house, they recognized this young Levite's accent. Who knew the Levites had an accent?
00:18:22
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Was it Australian? I don't know. So they went over and they asked him, hey ah who brought you here? See, even they know he's not from that area. And what are you doing in this place? Why are you here? And he told them about his agreement with Micah and that he had been hired as Micah's personal priest.
00:18:41
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Then they said, ask God whether not our journey will be successful.
00:18:47
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Go in peace, the priest replied, for the Lord is watching over your journey. an interesting tale, right? They're in Micah's house. They see this live-in Levite priest.
00:19:02
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They know something's off. But instead of saying, hey, I don't think this is the way it should be, they go, hey, let's ask this guy a personal question and see if he can divine us some information from God.
00:19:17
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It's like flipping a coin when you go to pray. I know none of you have ever done that. Lord, should I take that job? Oh, heads. I guess that's the Lord telling me I should take it.
00:19:31
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It's seeking an answer without seeking submission. It's wanting divine approval without divine authority. They're relying on a compromised Levite who has compromised himself and has compromised worship, and it becomes this self-serving enterprise I wrote down here.
00:19:50
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And it in it just spirals downhill from here.
00:19:55
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Micah steals the money from his mom. They melt it make an idol. That idol gets stolen by the Danites. Do you see the irony that's going on here?
00:20:07
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They just take it and they take this idol and they take his priest and he's running after them. Wait, don't leave me alone without my idols.
00:20:18
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And I wish the story just stopped right there because it would we could wrap that up in a real nice bow and head right off to lunch.
00:20:27
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But godlessness never just stops like that. It just keeps getting worse and worse and escalating. Look at verse 7. Chapter 18, verse 7.
00:20:41
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So the five men went out to the town of Elish where they noticed the people living their carefree lives like the Sidonians. They were a peaceful and secure people. They also were wealthy because the land was very fertile.
00:20:53
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And they lived a great distance from Sidon, so therefore they had no allies nearby.
00:20:59
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Pause. They're all alone by themselves. They're wealthy. They're easygoing. They're easy targets. And then when the men, verse 8 says, returned to Zorah and Eshtol, and their relatives asked them, what did you find? Hey, you'll never believe this, verse 9 says.
00:21:17
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Come on, let's attack these people. We've seen the land. It's very good. What are you waiting for? Don't hesitate to go. Let's go take possession. When you get there, you will find people living carefree lives.
00:21:30
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God has given us spacious and fertile land lacking nothing. So see what they've done right there. They've gone to Laish. on the bad advice from a compromised Levite who says, you're going to successful, they go out and take over these poor people of Laish and they attribute to God because they say somehow God has given us this land.
00:21:53
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See, they've taken bad instruction and now they've they let it affect their lives. So 600 men, verse 11, from the tribe of Dan, armed weapons of war, set out for Zorah and Eshtol, and they camped to the place west of Cariath, Jerim, in Judah,
00:22:08
Speaker
which is now called Mahanadan to this day. Then they went on from there into the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah. Five men, verse 14 says, who had scouted out the land around Lashish explained to the others, these buildings contained the sacred ephod. So now they found Micah's fancy vest.
00:22:25
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Some household idols, a carved image, and a cast idol. What do you think we should do? Then the five men turned off the road and they went over to Micah's house where the Levite lived and they greeted him kindly.
00:22:39
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If you just jump down a few more verses, they offer this priest, hey, jump ship with Micah, come hang out with the Danites, you can be more valuable to us, and they go and they massacre these people of Lash.
00:22:57
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Godlessness has real consequences.
00:23:01
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Lasting consequences. History has shown us any time a society has lost God forever, They've become godless. They've dethroned God.
00:23:13
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Human life is always just right right on the right on the cusp of being lost all of its value. Brothers sisters, we see this in Iran today. You simply need to turn on the news. Yes, there's a war going on, but this group of folks have dethroned God for generations.
00:23:34
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And because they've done that, human life Whether you're female or male, if you are in any opposition to radical Islam, you are simply wiped out. No value for life. It's because they've dethroned God in that area.
00:23:49
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We see it in the Bible. We see it play out in today's world. These decisions, when we compromise Christianity, have real lasting results. Look with me at all the way down to verse 30. This is how it ends.
00:24:02
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so So they set up the carved image, and they appointed Jonathan, son of Gershon, son of who? Moses, might want to put a little asterisk next to that, as their priest.
00:24:13
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This family continued as priests for the tribe of Dan until the exile. And so Micah's carved image was worshipped by the tribe of Dan as long as the tabernacle of God remained in Shod.
00:24:26
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So you have the one true God, Yahweh, worshipped over here. But because they made this decision to compromise over here, they also just slide in little bit of idol worship. And they both go on for a really long time, it says, until the exile.
Why True Biblical Worship Matters
00:24:47
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The message is clear this morning, brothers and sisters. When God isn't leading you and i he's not leading his people, we tend to lead ourselves. And it always invites his discipline.
00:25:02
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Because if we could lead well ourselves and we didn't need him, we wouldn't need him. And he would just leave us to our own devices. But he's not going to do that, brothers and sisters. He's going to invite his discipline. He's going to come in and correct us. He's going to strip out that stuff that you sprinkled into Christianity. And we see it happening in the American church now. We see all these pastors who compromise and they're getting outed left and right.
00:25:27
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Sexual immorality. Bad doctrine.
00:25:32
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It's just crazy. What do we do with this today, I put? If we want to avoid God's discipline in our lives and simply worship Him and Him alone, how do we do that?
00:25:45
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What's one concrete way that we can do that this week as you step out in your lives? Well, I'll put this. I'll put, ask the Lord to show you one area in your life where fear of discomfort has shaped your decisions more than God's Word has.
00:26:00
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In other words, where have you been trading biblical conviction for personal comfort?
00:26:08
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Where do you tend to soften up your stance, your obedience,
00:26:17
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just to keep things easy and comfortable, maybe with your family or with your kids? For some of you here today, this may look like avoiding that really tough spiritual conversation you need to have with your grown kids.
00:26:35
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And I'm just as guilty of this. We barely ever get to see our grown kids. So when we do, we don't want ever rock the boat. So I try not to say anything. I'm not helping them.
00:26:47
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I'm hurting them. If you were in the same boat, You need to have a real honest conversation with your grown kids if they're they're believing something false.
00:27:00
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Also put, for some of you, this means stop trying to fit in at work at all costs.
00:27:07
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When the crude jokes go around
00:27:11
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or the pictures that you're not supposed to be looking at are passed around and you're just gonna, hey, I just wanna fit in so I'm gonna join in, for some of you, you need to stop doing that.
00:27:22
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For those of you, maybe when you hear God's word clearly dismissed by somebody, maybe your family are at work, instead of remaining silent, maybe you should say, hey, hold on a second, I don't agree with that.
00:27:36
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Matter of fact, that's not what the Bible says. Which I will guarantee you, brothers and sisters, look at me real quick. Anybody who doesn't know God's word, as soon as you challenge them with God's word, they become defensive because they don't know it.
00:27:50
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Just say this. I'm going to give you a freebie right here. Hey, that sounds like a really interesting point. Can you show me where that is in the Bible? Because that's where I base all of my decisions are in the Bible. you just show me what chapter, which verse is that?
00:28:04
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If they can't show you that, there's a problem. So let me challenge you this week. Break that pattern. Whatever that pattern is, whatever the Holy Spirit is placing on your heart, if it's, hey, I need to pick up the phone and I need to call my grown kids, would you do that today?
00:28:23
Speaker
Maybe it's at the the family dinner table. Maybe it's at that weekly coffee meeting that you have with your friends. Maybe it's that workplace interaction that you're like, I'm gonna avoid this at all costs because I don't wanna rock the boat.
00:28:36
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Brothers and sisters, rock the boat this week and have that conversation.
00:28:42
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Tell yourself ahead of time, I want to do what's right in the Lord's eyes. I don't want to do what's right in my eyes. I want to do what honors Him. I don't want to do what's easy for me.
00:28:55
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Boy, I've got three more pages. How am I going to make this? I'm just joking.
00:29:01
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It means speaking truth in love.
00:29:06
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It means refusing to participate in gossip.
00:29:10
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means picking up that phone call and maybe reconciling. But the key is you've got to think about it before you get in that situation. So I want you to think this week, before you get in that situation, how am I going to respond?
00:29:24
Speaker
Because in the book of Judges, we've seen time and time again, they just didn't simply fall off the wagon. It was a slow drift.
00:29:34
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They just kept choosing comfort over conviction. If we cannot worship God alone in the very small social pressures of daily life, we will never worship him in the big pressures when they come. All right, let me wrap up with grandma's recipe.
00:29:52
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Those you who think it's okay to sprinkle in those ingredients.
00:29:57
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At some point, it's no longer the real deal. It's no longer biblical Christianity. It's a little bit less submission. It's a little more personal preference.
00:30:08
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It's not really about obedience as long as I don't rock the boat. No king, no submission, everybody doing what's right in their own eyes. Is that you today?
00:30:21
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The tragic part of this entire story, folks, they thought they were worshiping. They were just worshiping the wrong God.