Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. We used church candy for our new church plant the Garden, and the response blew me and my team away. At our new church Plant the Garden, we ran simple invite ads through none other than church candy, and hundreds of people responded. Seriously. People who had never even heard of us, who had never met me or heard me preach. They saw an ad on Facebook or Instagram. They showed up to a launch party or launch team training. Some of them have joined our team. Here's the best part. A good amount of them have started giving and tithing, which means the ads have paid for themselves. Our church plant is growing, and it's because we chose the right partner. We didn't have to figure out marketing strategies or spend hours tinkering with ad settings. Church candy handled it all, and it worked. You might not be planting a church, but if you're a pastor who wants to see more new faces on Sunday. And by the way, I've never met a pastor who doesn't want to see more new faces on Sunday. It's time to check them out. How about you go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a discovery call? Let their team show you what's possible when the right people hear about your church family. Welcome to day 146. Prepare your hearts, prepare your minds. We're about to. We're about to read some of the saddest content in the Bible. This is judges chapter 17 and 18. Tomorrow we're going to do judges chapter 19, 20, and 21. So two chapters today, three chapters tomorrow. I want you to get some context. Okay, let's dive into context clues. First. Go to Judges 17:6, Judges 18:1, Judges 19:1, and Judges 20:1, 25. Say those four verses again. These four verses are kind of to become our context. Judges 17:6, judges 18:1, judges 19:1, judges 20:1, 25. I'll start reading. Judges 17:6 says this. In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit. Everyone did as they saw fit. These words right here really encapsulate the moral decay that Israel has descended into. And so these last two stories are not in sequential order. They don't, like, move the narrative forward. Like the stories with the judges kind of, like, moved the narrative along. These are just anecdotal stories that some people think that they are. Because we've covered 350 years, some people think that these stories may be from earlier. These stories are just so, so, so, so indicative of the moral decay that has really set in to Israel. So Judges 18:1 is the next verse. In those days, Israel had no king. Okay, Judges 19:1, it says, in those days, Israel had no king. And then lastly, judges 21, 25. I know we're studying these in in two different days. Like, we're doing 17 to 18 today and then 19 to 21 tomorrow. But I kind of wanted to frame up both days for us. It says this in Judges 21:25, chapter 21, verse 25. In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit. These four verses are the theme for these next two stories. Okay, so let's start with the first story. First story is we are going to get a guy named Micah. Okay? Now, Micah is an interesting character, and there's a lot of people who think that Micah's mom may be Delilah. Okay? So the same Delilah who deceived Samson. There's a couple of people who think that Delilah's mom could possibly be Samson. Let's start in 17, verse one. Now, man named Micah from the hill country of Ephraim said to his mother the 1100 shekels of silver. Now, clue number one. 1100 shekels of silver. We just saw a story about 1100 shekels of silver. Like, literally, the last story, the previous chapter, was about a woman who got 5 times 1100 shekels of silver because she deceived Samson. That were taken from you, about which I heard you utter a curse. So someone stole your 1100 shekels of silver, and you cursed them. I have that silver with me. I took it. Hey, you curse someone who took 1100 pieces of silver? Just want to let you know, I'm the guy that took it, and I'm here to give it back. So when his mother said, then his mother said, the Lord bless you, my son. What? What? So he's getting blessed for stealing, and he's stealing an absorbently large amount of money. Okay? 1100 shekels of silver is like winning the lottery. This isn't even like a year's wage. This is hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars in today's equivalent. Okay? When he returned the 1100 shekels of silver to his mother, she said, I solemnly consecrate my silver to the Lord, for my son to make an image overlaid with silver. I will give it back to you. Okay, so now the mom wants the son to make an image, but she consecrates the silver to the Lord. This is not good. This is not good. We're getting God involved in our idolatry. So after he returned the silver to his mother, she took 200 shekels of silver and gave them to a silversmith who used them to make the idol. And it was put in Micah's house. Now, this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some household gods and installed one of his sons as his priest. In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit. A young Levite from Bethlehem in Judah who had been living within the clan of Judah, left that town in search for some other place to live. So the Levite now crosses paths with Micah. Micah offers that this Levite come be his priest, his personal priest. I'll give you 10 shekels of silver a year, your clothes and your food. So the Levite agreed to live with him, and the young man became like one of his sons. Then Micah installed the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in his house. And Micah said, now I know that the Lord will be good to me since this Levite has become my priest. All right, Not. Oh, there's so many levels of wrong here. First of all, Levites are supposed to only be working in the tabernacle. That's in Shiloh. The Bible is explicitly clear. Deuteronomy chapter 12 forbids what Micah is doing. Deuteronomy, chapter 12. I mean, you should read the whole chapter actually outlines. There's only one place you're supposed to worship me. Don't build any other altars. Don't set up any images. And definitely get this. If a Levite catches you worshiping or having idols outside of where I've chosen to be the central place of worship, they can kill you. So this Levite, he should have been scared to talk to this Levite. The Levite should have been like, you know, I can stone you. No, instead, the Levite's like, you could pay me 10 shekels a year. Yeah, man. I'll be your personal Levite. Your personal Levite. This is wild. This is wild. Up. And I'm a personal Levite. For a dude who has graven images, though we're worshiping God totally in an idolatrous way, there's so many layers of this that are just terrible. Terrible. What's Next, there's a group of Danites who are not happy with the tribal allotment that Joshua gave them. The issue is not the tribal allotment that Joshua gave them. The issue is that they don't want to actually fight to occupy the land. They want the land to be given to them. They don't want to fight for it. They don't want to win it. They just want easy land. So they sent out some spies to start spying out the rest of the land. Again, this is expressly prohibited all through the Torah. Do not move a boundary marker. Do not do land grabs. Do not go to war with people who I have not told you to go to war with. Do not steal land from your fellow Israelites. The tribal allotments that Joshua gave are supposed to be, I mean, in stone, permanent. The Danites, since they don't want to actually rid their land of the people who are occupying it, they sent out spies to go spy out some land. In the process of spying out the land, they come across Micah. Oh, they come across Micah and his personal Levite priest. So the five spies ask this personal Levite priest guy who works for Micah, please inquire of God to learn whether our journey will be successful. The priests answered them, go in peace. Your journey has the Lord's approval. No, it doesn't. It doesn't have God's approval. You're making things up. It does not have God's approval because they're doing something that goes completely against what God has already said. Now they go back to the Danites and they let them know, hey, there's actually some land over here. Ain't nobody watching out for it. This is going to be easy. We could take this land easy. Then 600 men of the Danites were armed for battle, set out on their way. They set up camp, and from there they went onto the hill country family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from. From an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in Your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode of Ephraim and came to Micah's house. So they roll up to Micah's house. The five dudes who had spied out the land said to their fellow Danites, yo, there's an ephod at that house and household gods and an image overlaid with silver. Now you know what to do. So they turned in there and went to the house of the young Levite at Micah's place and greeted him. The 600 Danites, armed for battle, stood at the entrance of the gate. The five men who had spied out the land went inside and took the idol, the ephod, and the household gods, while the priests and the 600 armed men stood at the entrance of the gate. And when the five men went into Micah's house and took the idol, the ephod, the household gods, the priest said to them, what are you doing? They answered, be quiet, don't say a word. Come with us and be our priest. Isn't it better that you serve a tribe and clan in Israel as priests rather than just one man's household? So the priest is happy about this and now follows. The Danites goes with the Danites. And now the Danites go and settle in land that Joshua did not give them. Verse 39. There the Danites set up for themselves the idol. And now the mic drop. Here's the mic drop. We could have gotten this Levite's name a whole chapter ago, but the author wants to do this for dramatic effect. Okay. There the Danites set up for themselves the idol, and Jonathan, son of Gershom, the son of Moses and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land. They continued to use the idol Micah had made all the time. The house of God was in Shiloh. Where should they have been going to worship? Shiloh? Where was the house of God at the Shiloh? Where did God say is the only acceptable place to worship him at his house in Shiloh, they have created a whole other worship ecosystem with a Levite named Jonathan, who's the son of Gershom, who's the son of Moses. Yo, One of Moses descendants became a personal Levite for a random dude named Micah. And then when Micah was getting robbed, essentially was like, I ain't going down with you, bro. I'm about to go be the Levite for These dudes, these, these Danites here. And so he goes from being a personal priest to a random dude named Micah. When Micah gets robbed, now he's a personal priest to a whole tribe of thugs who are going around stealing people's land. This is so sad. And this is one of Moses descendants that's doing this. What we want to focus on here is that no nation, no group, no country can rise above the quality of its leaders. And the Levites were called to be leaders. Each tribe has a different responsibility as it pertains to leadership. The people of Judah are designed to be royal leaders, right? Military leaders. The Levites are designed to be priestly leaders, spiritual leaders, pastoral leaders, prophetic leaders. The Levites were put in place by God to care for the people, lead the people, not become personally paid by people to be involved in rampant idolatry with no system or governance that totally goes against Yahweh's will. Like, that's wild. This is so upside down that it's hard to even wrap your mind around, like, how bad this is. First kings, chapter 12, verse 26. I'll go there. One kings, chapter 12 is going to tell us that this issue with the Danites is not going to be resolved anytime soon. 1st Kings 12:26. Jeroboam thought to himself, the kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their Lord Rehoboam. So this is Jeroboam talking about really? His brother, Rehoboam, King of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam. After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, is it too much for you to go to Jerusalem? Here are your gods. Israel, who brought you out of Egypt? One he set up in Bethel and the other in Dan. Dan. And this thing became a sin. The people came to worship the one at Bethel and. And went as far as Dan to worship the other. Remember the Danites? Yeah. They go up north to grab land that's not rightfully theirs. Land that Joshua did not allot to them. Land that is not theirs by covenant promise or inheritance. And now, once the united monarchy is over and Jeroboam takes the 10 northern tribes and secedes from Israel, he sets up golden calves. Where? In Dan. Why is he setting these things up in Dan? Because he knows that there's a stronghold of idolatry in Dan that's been there since the time of the Judges. Why is this so important is because Samson's a Danite and Samson was absolutely supposed to lead this tribe so that this would never happen. And if Samson had done his job, this land grab with the personal priest who's a descendant of Moses doesn't happen. And if this doesn't happen, this moment of first kings doesn't happen, you can start to see just the domino effect of decisions, that if this doesn't happen, this doesn't happen. If this doesn't happen, this doesn't happen. Which is why obedience is the best form of protection. God wants us to obey because you have no idea how your actions are going to kickstart a domino effect that's going to impact people that you've never met, descendants of yours that you don't even know about yet in your mind's imagination that these, all of these Samson, these Danites, this golden calf in Dan, these are all completely interconnected. And when you get a 30,000 foot view, you're able to see how failure right here leads to failure over here and failure over here. It's almost like you're able to see the dominoes when you get out of the individual trees and look at the entire forest. And I'll say this about leadership. It's funny because no group can rise above the level of its leaders. Leadership is a lid. And that doesn't mean that nobody can rise above the level of the leader. It just means the society at large can never rise above the level of the leader. Prior to Bill Clinton's presidency, high school students were kind of ignorant in regards to oral sex. But then Bill Clinton gets on TV and starts saying that oral sex isn't sexual. And in the next five years after Bill Clinton's presidency, you start to see massive rates of young people who are engaging in behaviors and saying like, oh, it's not sex, because leadership is spiritual. Like leaders have a level of influence that defies logic. That leaders create culture, they just do. And culture has this power that people act different in certain cultures than they do in other cultures. That is what leadership does. That leadership is a current that people swim in. And so at this point in Israel's history, the Levites are supposed to be leading. They are failing. Samson is supposed to be leading. He is failing. The nation is starting to look more and more and more and more and more like Canaan. And. And as we turn to our last couple of chapters, we will see tomorrow how the next story is exponentially more sad than the last story. I'll see you right here for day 147 I'm super excited that you're going on this journey. I'm super excited that we're almost done with the Book of Judges. Book of Judges gets really sad by the end, so I'm happy to be done. But I'm excited for you and I'm proud of you and I'll see you right here tomorrow as we finish up the Book of Judges. Love you guys. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of course courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.