Clough Judges Lesson 17

Judges 18

Turn to Deuteronomy 12. We are still in our study of Judges but we want to pick up some background details from the Law so that you may appreciate what is going on in Judges 17-18. We said that the book of Judges represents in history of man the first historical analysis of a nation; never before had there ever been a historical analysis anywhere in history. The book of Judges is the first historical analysis ever written by man. That goes for the Egyptians, the Assyrians, you name the civilization, China, whatever the civilization there was never a book of history done, completed or attempted before the book of Judges. The reason being: before that time no one had a framework. Where did they get their framework? The Law. After the Law, the Exodus and the conquest there was in effect God’s finished work on behalf of the nation, Israel. As a result the prophets conducted an analysis of the nation’s response to God’s love shown in the Exodus and conquest.

So we’ve seen that the book of Judges has at least two parts. The first part deals with the analysis of God’s grace toward the nation and the second part deals with the grassroots apostasy. First of all, to get the background we have to go back to the divine viewpoint framework. The first level of the divine viewpoint is the foundation. This foundation for the divine viewpoint we obtain from Genesis 1-11. It is this foundation that is made up of creation, plus the fall, plus the Noahic Covenant. This gives the framework on which history may be analyzed. This is the basis for the entire divine viewpoint framework. Beginning in 2000 BC God added a platform to the divine viewpoint framework, always building it up in time, this time the Abrahamic Covenant and with this we have the possibility of faith, covenantal faith, though people believed before this, now faith was clear in both its object and in its base.

So with the Abrahamic Covenant we now have part of the mind of God, part of God’s sovereign plan accessible to man. This means faith is possible. Unless we have part of God’s mind, unless we know part of His sovereign plan for us or for the world, or for both, we cannot have faith in God. So individuals today who reject the authority of the Word of God are people who cannot believe, and they can work up all sorts of emotions and they can work up all sorts of psychological devices to imitate faith but they cannot have true Biblical faith because they have no base for their faith. So the divine viewpoint at level one is the foundation. At level two we have faith. Level two depends on level one, if you compromise creation and substitute for its place evolution, you are tampering with the foundation, the divine viewpoint framework, you remove this and this falls. This is the basement, this is the first story.

Now the third story was erected beginning in 1400 BC by God through Moses and here we have the giving of the Law. The Law gave the possibility, not only for faith but it gave the possibility for loyalty. And so the issue that grows out of the giving of the Law, the second story in the house, this being the basement, this being the first story, the second story of the divine viewpoint is the Law and the byproduct in the Christian which is loyalty. Jesus said if you love Me you will keep My commandments. Loyalty to God has always something by which it can be measured. There must be a standard of loyalty to separate loyalty from treason, to separate spiritual patriotism from disorder and rebellion. And that standard of judgment is the Law. So the Law initiates the reign of the king over the nation Israel in 1400.

The book of Judges is a study of the loyalty of the nation between the years 1400 and 1000 BC.

It roughly a 300-400 year era of history in which the nation has, by its own freedom, the right to submit to the King or rebel against the King. And we have seen how time and again the nation rejected the rule of the King. As a result of this we have platform two taking effect here. Let’s see how it works. If the Law is violated and the Law rests on top of the Abrahamic Covenant it means we go back to the second level and this is exactly what God did. This is the story of Judges 3-16 in that every time the nation rebelled against the Law, every time they went on negative volition and rejected God’s leadership by going through all of the false religions of Baal and so on, every time they did this they fell away from the Law and they became disloyal and became rebellious.

Now on the basis of the Law God could have legally put the nation away right then. But God did not because God dealt with Israel in grace. There was grace under the Law, contrary to what the propaganda is against dispensationalism. Dispensationalists have never taught that there is no grace under the Law. It’s quite obvious there has to be; how else is a person going to be saved under the Law. So there was grace under the Law and part of this grace is expressed by Gods, you might say, eternal security for the nation. In other words, time and again the nation earned rejection, time and time again the nation went into treason and time and time again God could have legally put the nation away. He was under no legal obligation to continue His reign as King over the nation. By the cursings listed in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 God could have dropped it right there on the nation and that was it.

But we find the Law is resting on the second story of the divine viewpoint framework, which is the grace of the Abrahamic Covenant. God has elected the nation Israel in history and that is a gracious election; she wasn’t ever elected because of who and what Israel is; she was elected on the basis of who and what God is. And since the original election was sovereign and gracious, therefore she is not going to fall away, even though she become disloyal, even though she becomes treasonous, nevertheless, God in His grace maintains the existence of the nation Israel, not because of their merit but because of this. He will always go down and looking at this structure of the divine viewpoint framework, you always have to look at it in levels and if you’re going to talk about the Law you’re going to have to first understand the Abrahamic Covenant, you have to understand creation which gives you a Creator.

And you have to understand the fall which protects human volition, and a third section, contrary to what a lot of people seem to be teaching in fundamentalist circles, teaching that God is sovereign, God is sovereign, God is sovereign, God is sovereign, and thereby destroying human volition… now we believe God is sovereign but there’s a matter of distorting His sovereign to the point where you reject volition and this is what some men are doing in independent Bible churches today, emphasizing sovereignty so much that they’re destroying volition. But if you believe in a literal fall you’ll be protected against this error because in the fall who is it that is responsible for bringing sin into the world? Man by his own volition, so the fall is necessary to protect volition.

So with the doctrine of creation you have a Creator God, you have a God who is capable of intervening in history at any point. Miracles are possible if God is the Creator, but if you want to tamper with this foundation and if you want to do like certain Christian schools who in the past were very, very loyal to the Word of God and now are loosening up, allowing historical and scientific errors to creep into the text, etc. if you’re one of these kind of people then you can just forget about creation, and that destroys the foundation and if you destroy the foundation you have to also destroy faith and if you destroy faith you can’t have loyalty to God. In other words, you tamper with any part of the foundation and the whole building collapses.

So you have to build this on top of things, so we start out with the level of the divine viewpoint framework as the foundation. We must insist on creation, plus fall, plus Noahic Covenant; the Noahic Covenant guarantees the regularity and uniformity in nature. The Noahic Covenant is the basis for modern science. Faith gives us volition and creation us gives us the proper transcendent Creator God. And on top of this then we have faith; faith in what? Faith in God’s sovereign plan, as outlined in the Abrahamic Covenant. So this is the second level of this. This depends entirely upon the foundation; compromise the foundation and you’ve compromised the faith. If you believe that the sweet little Sunday School story of Adam and Eve never really happened, it’s just there for somebody’s edification, not for my edification because if it didn’t really happen I could care less, but if it really did happen then we’ve got something and we’ve got something that makes faith in a good God possible, because if the fall is there, then I have two precious things which I do not have if the fall isn’t there.

First of all, I have a God who is the Creator who can intervene in His creation. Secondly, I have volition. And thirdly I have a good God. You can’t have a good God if you do not have a fall. Do you know why? Because someone can look upon the universe as it is now and say any God who would create this mess must be a bad God and they would be exactly right, but you see, we don’t say that because we believe that evil came in at a point in time by man’s responsibility. So a literal fall is necessary to protect God’s goodness as well as ensure man’s volition. And the Noahic Covenant is the basis for science, the regularity in nature.

On top of this we lay another layer and that is the faith and the sovereign plan of God. It is this sovereign plan of God that now becomes the basis for the third layer, which we have just said, Law and from that the loyalty concept, the concept of love for God, and as we said this morning, this is the most basic of all love. Now this does not mean that you attain this kind of love psychologically but on logical grounds, love for God is antecedent to all other love. That includes love for man to wife, wife for husband; it includes love for other people. You can’t have love for other people if you don’t have love for God. That’s what’s wrong with all this sensitivity stuff that’s creeping into fundamentalist circles. We all get around and share our dirty linen and trot it all out so everybody in the room can know what the details of your sex life are, what you did at 2:30 last night, etc. And all of this is just a lot of malarkey because what it does, it creates a pseudo love; it turns people’s attention away from love for God. The Christian is called to be sensitive, not to other people, the Christian is called to be sensitive to God and you become sensitive to God by being loyal to Him and you learn that in the era of the Law. This is what the Law can contribute to the Christian’s life today, so the Law is very important.

Not in Deuteronomy 12 we have the last part of that Law and it is this part of that Law that we want to study so that we have proper background for Judges 17-18. In Deuteronomy 12 we are introduced to the second half of the book of Deuteronomy. Now this second half of the book of Deuteronomy has many sections but one section in particular begins in chapter 12 and it deals with the unity of the nation. Deuteronomy 12 gives unified worship; chapter 13 gives unified doctrine; chapter 14-15 give unified culture, all the cultural rules about hair cuts and everything else, and then chapter 16 unified national holidays, patriotism in other words, the divine expression of patriotism, love for country.

So you have all of these things. Now this is part of the Law but it’s this part of the Law that comes under attack in the book of Judges, chapter 17-18. The apostasy of the nation is directed against all four of these areas. It’s directed against unified worship, how? Now we haven’t got time to give all the background, I just want to summarize quickly chapters 12-13, take these and you can see first chapter 12 unifies worship, and I want you to see what the Mosaic Law was for? Worship of the nation. When we look at this then you’ll understand why what is going on in Judges 17-18 is so utterly abominable in God’s sight.

In Deuteronomy 12:1-3 we have the elimination of all rival worship centers. “These are the statutes and judgments,” God says, “which you shall observe to do in the land, which the LORD God of thy fathers gives thee.…” [2] You shall utterly destroy all the places,” now “the places refers to every single temple inside the Promised Land. Inside the bounds of that real estate there was never, never, never, never to be any unauthorized worship center. And this includes worship centers that had the name Yahweh or Jehovah. That’s a violation of the third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain.” Some of you have been brought up to believe that the third commandment is talking about cursing. The third commandment is talking about taking God’s name and attaching it to an object which He has not authorized. Literally in the Hebrew it means raising His name up as a banner, “you shall not raise His name up as a banner” is what it’s talking about and it means, for example, people get together and they decide they’re going to start their own little private religion and they label it by saying the religion of Jesus Christ. Now that’s a violation of the third commandment. It’s taking or raising up the name of God in vain, in other words, upon something that is totally unauthorized.

And so in Deuteronomy 12:2 they were to eliminate every other area of worship except the one which God ordained. In verse 3 this was to include physical destruction, totally. And then verses 4-14, “Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God. [5] But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there, unto His habitation shall you seek, and there shalt thou come.” In other words, there is to be ONE and only ONE place of meeting with God. Now it’s true, the individual believer in the Old Testament could have met God privately in his own prayer life; we’re not talking about that. What we’re talking about is a public worship surrounding a visible object, and this was to be eliminated just to the tabernacle, that is the place of verse 5. All competing areas were to be eliminated.

And Deuteronomy 12:29-32 deal with the warning, “When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, where you are going to possess them, and you succeed them, and well in their land,” [30] You’d better “take heed to yourself that you be not snared by following them, after they are destroyed from before thee, and that you inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? Even so I will do likewise. [31] Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God; for every abomination to the LORD, which He hates, have they done unto their gods. For even their sons and their daughters they have burned in the fire to their gods.” The point of Deuteronomy 12 is to establish the principle of authorized worship at an authorized center, period, over and out. And no matter how sincere, or no matter how pious, or regardless of the religious emotions of the moment, no one was ever permitted to set up an worship center elsewhere, other than the tabernacle. And during the time of the book of Judges, that place where God had set His name, the tabernacle, was located at Shiloh. And that place and that place alone was the place for worship.

Now in Deuteronomy 13 we have a second area, and that is unified doctrine and in chapter 13 we have a lot of lessons that modern Christians would do well to look at because today you circulate much in evangelical circles and there’s always a downgrading of Bible doctrine, you might get overfed or something. Everybody is against doctrine, and yet here in Deuteronomy 13 we have it emphatically established by the Mosaic Law that there is to be one unified code of doctrine. In verses 1-5 even supernatural miracles that are in violation of doctrine are to be rejected. So this goes for all of the fanaticism that’s creeping into fundamentalism, people laying hands on people’s knees and all the ridiculous, foolish blasphemous practices, all of this falls into the category of verses 1-5. These men are working bona fide supernatural miracles in verses 2-3, but there’s only one problem, they are teaching false doctrine. And if they’re teaching false doctrine, even though…even though they have miracles to substantiate their false teaching, they are to be eliminated. Now be careful, we live in the Church Age so we don’t go around killing witches. Now in church history several people have had this mistaken image that you treat people just like you did under the Mosaic Law. That’s not true, but the principle is true, you reject false doctrine even if it comes to you with miracles.

In Deuteronomy 13:6-11 this is taken down into the family. There are the various institutions, and we started with divine institution number four, the nation, but to keep the nation pure…you notice, by the way, how do you keep a national entity pure and strong spiritually? Notice how Moses does it, you work on the family unit, like we saw in Deuteronomy 6, and here again the same principle. We keep the nation doctrinally sound by doing it with the family unit. Verse 6, “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, o thy friend who is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not know, thou, nor thy fathers, [7] Namely, of the gods of the people who are round about you, near unto thee or far off from thee….” Verse 8, “Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall tine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shall thou conceal him. [9] But thou shalt surely kill him.”

By the way, those of you who say that Moses taught that thou shalt not kill, what do you do about verse 9, it’s part of the same Law. Moses didn’t teach “thou shalt not kill,” he never did, it’s not part of the Ten Commandments. So in verse 9 you have capital punishment authorized and you have it authorized in the most difficult of all cases, when apostasy threatens a family unit, loved ones, people you care very dearly for, people with whom you’re emotionally involved and yet Moses says even the person with whom you are emotionally involved, if you spot false doctrine in the sense of apostasy, away from Jehovah’s allegiance, and you spot disloyalty, you report them to the authorities. That’s the way Israel was supposed to have been run, and that was the way the nation could have maintained its spiritual purity. Of course it didn’t, but that’s the method that was authorized under the Mosaic Law. Deuteronomy 13:6-11 deals with the family unit.

Deuteronomy 13:12-18 deals with cities, verse 12, “If thou shall hear a report in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy God has given thee to dwell there, saying, [13] Certain men, worthless fellows, re gone out fro among you….” Verse 14, “Then you shall make an inquiry,” and you’ll investigate that city, you’re going to send a committee of Levite priests into that city, we’re going to check this thing out. Now when you get in Judges 17-18 we are going to see every one of these principles violated, under the most sincere pious fraudulent front, because nowhere in the two chapters we’re going to deal with is God’s name ever blasphemed on the surface, everybody is blessing everybody else in the name of Jehovah, everybody is being very sincere, everybody is being very religious, but Deuteronomy 12 and 13 are being violated left and right.

Let’s turn to Judges 17; it all began with a man with a very pious name, except in your Bible this particular name isn’t transliterated properly. The name is actually Micah this is “Me,” see the “Mi” in Micah it means “who,” the Hebrew ca or ka is the preposition life, and yaho is part of Yahweh. So, who (is understood), who is like Yahweh. It’s a very pious name this man had. He was named this, probably by a very pious mother. There’s only one trouble with both mother and son; both were evidently on negative volition toward the Word of God because they knew nothing of the Word of God. They have a lot of religion and a lot of emotion and a lot of sincerity but they have minus Bible doctrine, nothing there, no content. So it’s quite obvious somewhere along the line they have become carnal. And so we find then that we have Micah setting up his own temple. We find him having his house of gods.

You recall in Judges 17:5, “Micah had an house of gods,” a Beth Elohim, a house of gods is a temple, it’s a religious center. Recall what we’ve just reviewed from Deuteronomy 12-13. What did Deuteronomy say? No other place except the place that the Lord thy God has chosen, and yet in direct violation, no matter how sincere he was, he was still in direct violation of Deuteronomy 12, and so the house of gods in verse 5 is an unauthorized meeting place. So the first thing about Micah’s apostasy is that he is trying to substitute a meeting place for God. This would be analogous in our generation for substituting something for the Word of God. Now you meet God in the Word and nowhere else. And all this stuff that’s pedaled by these organizations, these special organizations that are always trying to compete with the local church, just beware for these things. The Bible authorizes growth in the local church and any Christian movement that says we build men, outside of the local church is apostate.

Whenever growth is promoted outside of the local church you have apostasy already on your hands. The local church is the place for growth. Special organizations that God has raised up are fine for evangelism, and that’s their job evangelism. But usually what happens, after a while, they win men and then they start to build men and they have discipleship, training classes, etc. Usually they have a one on one kind of thing where they spiritual bully a new believer. Here some poor guy becomes a Christian and he has to be chained to this mature believer; they work it out in the dorm so he has to room with a mature believer and when he goes down to the bathroom he goes with the mature believer, this kind of discipleship. And it is a violation of the person’s privacy and butting into their affairs and nobody grows this way. All you create is resentment or worse than that you create a pious fraud because what you are training this person to do is respond to a person. That’s fine as long as this man is straight, but tomorrow if somebody else comes along to replace him and he’s all fouled up spiritually, then what happens? You have taught this young believer to respond to a person, to follow a person, and what happens? He follows him; he follows him right into apostasy because you haven’t taught him that the allegiance is to the Word of God first and to people after that. Then we have all these substitutes, substitute Bible classes that are taught in direct time clash with a local church, and if anybody raises their voice in opposition, well, the local church is failing. Two things wrong with that criticism; number one, the local church can never ultimately fail because it’s the ordained instrument of God, and the second thing that’s wrong with that, you never give the local church a chance.

Micah is trying to substitute another meeting place for God; the meeting place in the New Testament is the Word, that’s the meeting place and you can substitute prayer in a group or something else… huh-un, it’s the Word of God that’s the meeting place, always the Word, the Word, the Word, Bible doctrine, that’s the meeting place and the only meeting place. And so when Micah, in Judges 17:5 set up the house of God he’s doing just what believers are doing today. This man’s a believer; this man is probably a believer from all we can gather from the text. And he is a believer, there’s a very interesting thing happen. You take a person who is a nice non-Christian, and he starts out fine, and then he goes positive toward the gospel and then he becomes a Christian, and then what happens, he goes negative after he becomes a Christian and then he’s worse than he was before as a non-Christian. Do you know why? Because he’s minus common sense. Watch that; an unbeliever will have more common sense than the Christian who’s out of it.

And this is what happens. Micah should have known this, that you don’t just start a treasonous meeting place that violates the authority of the King. Can you imagine if he was a Syrian unbeliever over there in Assyria and say it was during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser or something. Would you dare, as an Assyrian subject, to set up a temple devoted to somebody else than the gods of Tiglath-Pileser? No non-Christian in Assyrian would ever have the audacity to do something like that. And yet this is what believers are doing, believers who have received Christ and have gone on negative volition, are carnal, and therefore have no common sense.

And then what else does he do in Judges 17:5; it says that he made an ephod and he had the teraphim, and the ephod, these are actually the clothes of the high priest and they depict the work of Jesus Christ, they were made of various colors; the ephod had five colors on it, it had white which spoke of the righteousness of Christ, it had red which spoke of the blood of Christ, it had blue speaking of heaven, the home of Christ, it had gold speaking of the deity of Christ and it had purpose speaking of the royalty of Christ. So he substitutes for the high priest’s ephod his own. So he knocks out the high priest and establishes his own, and this is tantamount to negative volition toward or rejection of the work of Christ. So not only does he reject the word but he rejects the finished work of Jesus Christ, substituting something else for it. That is the significance of the ephod and the teraphim. And then he substitutes one of his sons, and he has his idol that we mentioned last time and the idol is just an overt sign of treason against the nation.

Now in Judges 18 we’re going to deal with the tragic results of this kind of behavior. And I want to see how error is compounded upon error. Let’s look at the ingredients. It starts out with the mother. We don’t know much about this mother, we do know only from her conversation that she did not know any doctrine. So here’s a mother minus doctrine. She was very religious, however, so she had a lot of religion, but she had very little Bible doctrine, and she taught her son to be very religious but he was minus Bible doctrine. She taught her son certainly to be obedient because he certainly is obeying. And so this was the first ingredient. The second ingredient was a young man who also had no doctrine, and the third ingredient was the Levite, and he had no doctrine. How do we know he had no doctrine? Because when he wanted a place for service he left it up to blind circumstance, I yielded my life to Jehovah, and now whatever comes is God’s will. And so whatever came happened to be two clods, therefore he was passive, anything and everything that came his way was God’s opening the door; doctrine of open and closed doors. So everything is opened and therefore God must be blessing. So now in chapter 18 we’re going to add to this mess and in every case from a religious person minus Bible doctrine. And they are going to generate a monster in this nation… a monster in this nation. It’s like I said this morning, we could do without some Christians in high places in this country. We would be better off as a nation to have non-Christians with common sense than believers in high places who don’t know anything, because believers in high places who don’t know anything wind up as advocates of every silly, nitwit cause from the abolition of capital punishment to the abolition of the military.

Judges 18:1, “In those days there was no king in Israel: and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.” What about this tribe of Dan. The first thing we notice about it is that “the Danites sought,” and the word “sought” is a Hebrew participle and the Hebrew participle is continuous action, just like the Greek participle when it’s used adverbially. So what this means is that the tribe of the Danites, for an extended period of time, were looking around. You say what’s wrong with them looking around? Let’s get some background on Dan. Turn to Joshua 19:41 and I’ll show you what’s wrong with them looking around. Like every other tribe in the nation Dan received their inheritance by lot. Their lot fell about here, the small area in there, and that was their lot, it’s outlined in verses 41-46, we don’t know all those boundary points, it’s very hard to find all these boundary points but in verse 47 “the boundary [border] of the children of Dan went out too little for them; therefore the children of Dan wet up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and possessed, and dwelt in it, and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their father.”

Now verse 47 includes action that we a looking at tonight. This is one thing I want to warn you about, if you have been in discussions with the liberals who like to attack Scripture, beware of something, always remember this and you’ll be off the hook. The Hebrew narratives are not always in chronological order; often times they are topical, like a newspaper story. You open up the newspaper and read the first paragraph, Nixon’s ping pong balls in Munich or something, then we come down to paragraph 2 and we begin to fill in more details, and then paragraph more details; in other words the news reporter writes everything he can in the first paragraph, and then he goes and develops these details as he goes on down. That’s just the way the Hebrew narrative is working, so in verses 41-47 you have a capsule summary of the history of Dan and it includes things that occurred after the death of Joshua. Joshua didn’t write all the book of Joshua, the last part of Joshua was compiled after his death, and this is one illustration. So you’re going to be hooked if you don’t look at this carefully because someday somebody is going to trot you over to verse 47 and say look at that, there is Dan doing something that he doesn’t so until the last part of Judges so what we’ve got here is two or three different narratives, like J & D & E & P and so forth, so we’ve got multiple sources clashing against one another. Oh no, just remember to take it topically. Joshua 19:41-47 are put together in the book of Joshua to give you a complete capsule history of the tribe of Dan and what they did with their inheritance.

In Joshua 19:48 where it says “This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Dan according to their families, these cities with their villages,” and so forth, this summarizes verses 41-47. But the thing to notice is verse 47 because here these people complained about something. They complained that it was too little for them. To find out why they complained that the land was too little turn to Judges 1:34, “And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountain; for they would not allow them to come down into the valley.” In other words, the Danites, when they had this area of inheritance, they had part of it in the highlands. See, there’s a highland that runs down Israel and this is the lowlands; Dan occupied the highland but they couldn’t push west down the coast to meet the coastline. They couldn’t do that and the reason they couldn’t do it was because of the Amorites, but the real reason as we studied when we went through Judges 1 is that spiritually they were weak, and spiritually weak people are always weak militarily…always. The reason why spiritually weak people are weak in war is because spiritually weak people can never make a decision and stick with it. They can’t make quick decisions, they have no framework for it and once they do make it they’re vacillating and so on, they have no absolutes, no confidence in anything, no confidence in their decisions, no confidence in people, no confidence in the situation and so they represent a very vacillating kind of situation in any kind of war. That was the same thing with Dan. Dan was unable to extricate the Amorites as God commanded and as God promised because of negative volition on their part.

So that is the background so when we come to Judges 18:1 and we read that the “Danites are looking around,” that historically was the time when the Danites, because of their own negative volition, because of their spiritual weakness, failed to be aggressive and failed to destroy the Canaanites. They probably had a lot of these believers, oh we shouldn’t kill people, the Bible says “thou shalt not kill.” They probably had a lot of this, the disarmament crowd, etc. So instead of being aggressive militarily and starting a war and conquering the enemy they let the enemy take over, and the looking and searching around you find in verse 1 is a manifestation of the unrest of carnality. In other words, God has disciplined them. How has He disciplined them? By holding up the occupation. God would give them the victory, we’ve got promise after promise after promise in Joshua and Judges, there’s no lack of promises. So God is disciplining Dan and the Danites are looking around. What are they trying to do? They’re trying to get out from under the discipline of God, like oftentimes believers do.

For example, take a Christian organization, a Christian starts out a very godly organization, and it goes on in history and finally you wind up like certain seminaries where now they have to have a PR man to make relationships to hook people with money and suck in money, this kind of stuff. Why is that? If God doesn’t supply the funds there’s something wrong with the organization. One of the great slogans of the founder of the Salvation Army was: God’s work done in God’s way always receives God’s blessing. So you have organizations that are being disciplined by God and the sign of the discipline is lack of God’s financial blessing on the organization. What do they do? They’re looking around and so they start looking around for this trust fund and that trust fund and something else? Watch out for organizations that are always looking around.

The Danites are looking around and they’re looking around to avoid the discipline of God. Now that territory is still allotted to them. Notice this, nothing we read in Judges 18 invalidates Joshua 19; those boundaries are still there and they are still occupied by the Canaanites. So God hasn’t changed one inch the boundaries originally given to Dan. But Dan has given up. Instead of facing their own weakness, instead of calling a cadre of Levite priests to teach them the Word of God, instead of getting the people trained in the Word and having them trust the Lord daily for their promises and for their needs of life, instead of doing this they have rebelled and so we are going to have our land and what they are saying is we don’t care what God’s will is, we’re going to get our land. And this is like believers, I don’t care what God’s will is, I’m going to have my prosperity. It’s the same attitude. So this is what this “looking around” is. I want to communicate to you what the author is trying to get at with this participle; they’re “looking around.” And so they seek or look around “an inheritance to dwell in; for unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel.” Now the verb “fall” is the same Hebrew verb that is used for the lot; in other words, when that lot…when the Urim and Thummim was shaken and we don’t know exactly how this went on but he somehow reached into the ephod and he pulled out, apparently one of these stones, and he dropped and it fell to the ground and they would say thus falls the lot. So this verb used in verse 1 is the same kind of verb except it doesn’t refer to the original lot, it’s a pun. And what the author is saying is look, the lot, we know from Joshua 19 the lot fell for this territory, but he’s saying it hasn’t fallen [tape turns].

…means they have not occupied their possession. God has already granted them the possession, the legal right to it, but it hasn’t fallen. And it’s the author’s way of kind of taking a back-handed slap at Dan. They had the lot fall to them, God promised them blessing upon blessing upon blessing but they failed to secure it.

Judges 18:2, And the children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts, men of valor, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land,” they send out spies, and notice this, remember we said, what have we got here? We’ve got one mother on negative volition, we’ve got one son on negative volition, we’ve got one Levite on negative volition, and now we’re going to have five spies on negative volition. You can see how this thing mounts up, so guess where they go in verse 2, “who when they came to mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, they lodged there.” Now isn’t that sweet, of all the possible places to lodge they had to find that place. And you’re going to see how Satan is guiding them through the open-door policy, just like Satan guides believers through the open-door policy, God closes the door, interpreting the fact that any resistance to the will of God is a closed door from God…huh-un. There may be doors that slam in your face and do you know what God tells you to do? Walk through it any way and the funny part of it is you never have to worry about your face because at the last minute the door always does open.

So there will come times in your life as a believer when you are going to experience closed doors and you begin to reflect about it in your prayer life, you’re going to come up with a conclusion, now that door can’t be from God because I know what God wants me to do and this thing must be from Satan, it’s a satanic hindrance and so therefore I am going to resist this closed door, I am not going to accept it as from God. But in verse 2 these spies come through the open door and they wind up here. Now you can tell who’s putting all this together. We don’t have to know Satan’s name in the text to know that he’s the one that’s behind this.

In Judges 18:3 we have a parenthesis, and here again for those of you who have to deal with the critics, let me point out a little footnote, notice the last part of verse 2, “they came to Mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and they lodged there.” Now if you stop there with a period at the end of that sentence and you read the next sentence, doesn’t it sound like it’s wrong? Look at that, the end of verse 2, and then “When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice of the young man the Levite; and they turned in thither, and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? And what makes thou in this place? And what hast thou here?” In other words, that’s when they go in. So what is this, isn’t there a repetition here chronologically? The answer again is that in the end of verse 2 you have a summary sentence, and beginning in verse 3 you have a parenthesis that develops the content of that summary sentence. So you have the summary sentence, that’s the complete action, they lodged there. Now beginning in verse 3 the writer takes you back and gives you the details that led up to the lodging of verse 2. The sequence of verses are not in chronological order but don’t let that throw you, it never was intended to be in chronological order, it’s in logical order.

“And when they were by the house of Micah,” now they haven’t lodged there yet in verse 3, they’re just walking by, and as they are walking by, these are spies. Now they’re not running the flag of Dan out and saying hey, we’re spies, they’re just walking through and observing. And by the way, it shows you how decadent the land has become because if they had been operating according to doctrine they shouldn’t even have had to send out spies; what they should have done is go to the temple. If they needed more land go to the high priest, get another throw of the Urim and the Thummim, they didn’t have to do this spy job, but they send out the spies and that shows they’re spying on other vassals of the Great King. So they’re out of line.

So when they walk by they recognize, the Hebrew has the connotation here that they walk by and this man was speaking in some sort of a dialect. Now we don’t understand about these dialects but it comes up again and again in the history of the Old Testament. But you wouldn’t think in such a small area of country that these people would develop dialects. But the Levites had a peculiar kind of dialect in which they spoke, we don’t know what the dialect was, we just know they had one. And he evidently was saying prayers or something, or whatever he did and when he was doing this he had a certain kind of expression or a certain kind of dialect. And these spies are going around and saying say, do you know what that sounds like. It’s interesting, every once in a while someone listens to my tapes and I’ll occasionally drop a Boston accent on the tape; and it’s the same with the Levite here, he drops this Levitical pronunciation of the Hebrew and so they recognize this and they turn in. And they say “who brought you hither,” now there again is a statement that shows that they’re out of it because the Levites should have been directed by the Lord, the Lord brought him hither. But obviously they can only think in naturalistic terms.

“And what makes you in this place? And what have you here?” Now if they had known Deuteronomy 12-13 what should they have done immediately? If you were the spies and you were walking along and you saw this shrine with this priest counting beads and they had candles and everything else here, what would you do if you knew Deuteronomy 12-13? You’d make a beeline to the tabernacle and assemble a tribe and they assemble an army together and they’d go wipe it out; that would have been the doctrinal thing to do. No other tabernacle or shrine, no other competing place of worship was tolerated under Deuteronomy 12-13. But they’re so far out of it that they don’t recognize it either, so this is why we have five spies on negative volition.

Judges 18:4, “And he said unto them, Thus and thus dealeth Micah with me, and hath hired me, and I am his priest.” Now if they didn’t recognize the fact that it was a false temple certainly they should have recognized this; there’s something wrong here. It doesn’t impress them at the least, and so they say, [5] “And they said unto him, Ask counsel, we pray thee, of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous.” So here they are, negative volition, minus Bible doctrine, and very religious because the Hebrew term, “ask God” is the term used throughout Scripture for asking the Urim and Thummim. Let me show you a use of this where it’s used correctly.

Turn to Judges 20:18 where you have the proper use of this asking the oracle. “And the children of Israel arose, and went up to the house of God,” now this is the right house of God, that’s Elohim, this is the one at Shiloh, this is the one where the tabernacle is, so they “asked counsel of God,” it is the same expression in the Hebrew, “they asked counsel of God, and said, Which of us shall go up first to the battle against the children of Benjamin? And the LORD said, Judah shall go up first.” That doesn’t mean that the Lord actually spoke, this was a consultation executed through the high priest and the Urim and Thummim. And the high priest would have, again we don’t know exactly what this Urim and Thummim was, scholars differ on what this is, but one guess is that they had these two kind of rocks, or at least they worked the same way, it was a yes/no answer. In other words, they would get up there and they’d go through the rocks, all right who will go up first, Benjamin? And the Urim and Thummim would come out no. Who will go up first, Ephraim? The Urim and Thummim would come out negative. And then Judah’s name was listed on the roster it came out Judah so Judah was to go. So that’s how they worked. And in Judges 20:18 we have the legitimate way for asking counsel of God, the doctrinal way.

Back to Judges 18:5, when these five spies asked counsel they are in direct violation of the will of God. So not only do they go along with the existence of this false center of worship, not only do they go along with the complete prostitution of the priesthood, but they add to it, they get involved with it and they begin to seek God’s blessing. Notice again the theme of this whole passage, in both Judges 17 and 18 is a reiteration of divine guidance, divine guidance, but it’s not, it’s satanic guidance. Do you see why it is so necessary if you’re looking for the will of God in your life that you have to adhere to the Word; the Word of God always, not open and closed doors. Now open and closed doors can be guidance if you interpret them by the Word of God. But if you’re going to go by the open and closed doors alone you’re going to be a victim, just like these people and you may, as a believer, shock yourself for all eternity by creating a monster. Micah, for all we know, may have been a genuine believer and yet he and his mother led to the creation of the first apostate center. So they ask counsel

The last part of Judges 18:5 is mistranslated in the King James, “That we may know whether way which we shall go up be prosperous.” That’s the thought of the verse but technically it’s not what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew says, “That we may know whether you can make prosperous our way.” And that’s just the idea, the concept of blessing. In other words, will you give us a blessing? It was a solicitation for blessing on the part of this priest.

Judges 18:6, “And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the LORD is your way wherein ye go.” And here again for the third time in this series we have pseudo divine guidance. If you look back at Judges 17:2, remember what happened when the boy turned himself back to his mother, what does she say, “Blessed be thou of the Lord.” That’s the first false concept. In Judges 17:13, what did Micah say, “Now know I that the LORD will do me good,” see, I’ve got my good luck charm, I’ve hired him, given him a yearly pension and now God can’t help but bless me because I’ve got my own private priest. So here we come again to 18:6 were we have pseudo divine guidance. Now this should be a warning to all of you, never to accept open doors as from the Lord or closed doors as from the Lord. They can be from Satan as well and the only way you can tell whether a door is from God or from Satan is to go to the Word; that’s the only way. If you don’t go to the Word you’re just going to be wandering like these Levites and these spies.

Judges 18:7, “Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in any thing; and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man.” To make a long story short, they saw this place, that it was quiet, that it was far from the Zidonians, the Zidonites dwelt by the sea and they felt secure, confident and so forth. And so they see this ripe thing that’s just ready for the picking. What they have done geographically is to more north, they’ve moved from this camp down here, they move up to Ephraim, this is Micah’s house, mom’s place, and then they’ve gone up here to a place which is going to be known as Dan, and that’s the place they’re going to destroy, way up in the north.

And the reason why the writer puts these little notices in verses 7-8 is just to show you something, they had it hand picked by Satan for them. In other words, all the other tribes had to do what? They had to fight, they had to slug their way through the Canaanites and guess what, Dan finds this right clump. Now isn’t there something abnormal about this. See, that’s why these details are here in verses 7-8, the author is trying to say look, look, look, there’s something abnormal about this thing. When every other tribe had to fight their way through, why do you suppose again we have an open door? Why this place is just asking to be invaded, they could have had billboards, “invade us, please.” And it couldn’t have been clearer than this. So those notices, although you may think there’s a lot of extra details in verses 7, 8 and 9, they’re all in there for a reason, to show you that there was an open door given the tribe of Dan and that Dan’s work is no sign of God’s blessing.

Let’s look at it another way, make sure we get this point. Let’s conceive ourselves as walking a rough piece of ground and here’s a side view of this thing and let’s say we’ve got an obstacle there and let’s say we’re walking along and we can’t by our own human means get over that obstacle. Now if we operate on a naturalistic basis, if we’re negative to Bible doctrine we’ll say oh-oh closed door, and turn around. But often times God will put an obstacle in your life to show you He loves you and to show you He’s with you because if you say now I know God’s will is over there and so I’m going to go through that obstacle, move the mountain so to speak, Jesus said if you have to move mountains, that’s what He’s talking about, obstacles. So if you have the faith that the will of God is on the other side of the mountain you just keep on walking, and that’s what Jesus meant, the faith that shall move mountains. Now the mountain is the obstacle here. Now if God, instead of doing that, gave you this kind of a thing; here you are and here’s His will for you and you just walked over there? Would that be a sign of God’s blessing in your life? No, because you haven’t given any point of opportunity for the display of the grace of God, for the power of God. So the obstacles often come in just so that God can show His power on your behalf.

If the obstacle wasn’t there He couldn’t show what He can do for you and it’s the same thing here in verses 7-8 in reverse. The tribe of Dan is like this. They have a complete straight access to their place and they’re going to set up apostacy with a capital “A” when they finally get there. And it’s all because everything is too level; always be suspicious when things are too easy. [Verse 8, “And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye? [9] And they said, Arise, that we may go up against them: for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: and are ye still? Be not slothful to go, and to enter to possess the land.”]

Judges 18:10, “When ye go, ye shall come unto a people secure, and to a large land,” this is the spy report, “for God hath given it into your hands; a place where there is no want of any thing that is in the earth.” So verse 11 they went out, six hundred of them, “And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed with weapons of war. Verse 12, “And they went up, and pitched in Kirjath-jearim, in Judah, [wherefore they called that place Mahaneh-dan unto this day: behold, it is behind Kirjath-jearim. [13] And they passed thence unto mount Ephraim, and came unto the house of Micah.” In verse 13 they came to the house of Micah and watch what’s going to happen, Micah is going to wish he never invited the spies here.

Judges 18:14, “Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Laish, and said unto their brethren, Do ye know that there is in these houses an ephod, and teraphim, and a graven image, and a molten image? Now therefore consider what ye have to do.” In other words, they’ve got six hundred men and they’re going to go in there and steal it, going to walk away with it. [15] “And they turned thitherward, and came to the house of the young man the Levite, even unto the house of Micah, and saluted him.”

Judges 18:16, “And the six hundred men appointed with their weapons of war, which were of the children of Dan, stood by the entering of the gate.” See, here’s the house, evidently it had a gate around it, and mom’s place was over here, and they had Micah’s little hobby shed over here, where he had all of his gods. And they had a little fence around it, so the six hundred men, just to make sure they get the point, they start spacing themselves right out here, so there’s about six hundred men right around the gate, not saying anything, just standing there with their spears prominently displayed. And then the five men come up and knock on the door. This is the scene here.

Judges 18:17, “And the five men that went to spy out the land went up, and came in thither, and took the graven image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood in the entering of the gate with the six hundred men that were appointed with weapons of war.” He doesn’t know what to do. [18] “And these went into Micah’s house, and fetched the carved image, the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image. Then said the priest unto them, What do ye?” The priest said what are you going to do. [19] “And they said unto him, Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, and be to us a father and a priest: is it better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one man, or that thou be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel?” In other words, they offered him a bigger salary; they’ve got this guy’s number, who offers the best salary gets him, that’s all.

Judges 18:20, “And the priest’s heart was glad,” materialism lust, they knew how to get to him, “and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people. [21] So they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the cattle and the carriage before them.” They put their wives and their children ahead of them and they marched them back. Know why? Because they had a rear guard, they expected a little activity from the rear. So the took their six hundred warriors and marched in the back.

Judges 18:22, “And when they were a good way from the house of Micah, the men that were in the houses near to Micah’s house were gathered together, and overtook the children of Dan.

23 And they cried unto the children of Dan. And they turned their faces, and said unto Micah, What ails thee, that thou come with such a company?” Micah comes out, and in verse 24 the irony of this whole thing. Here is a man who probably was a believer and he makes this pathetic scene, crying like a little baby, “And he said, Ye have taken away my gods which I made,” now isn’t that a brilliant statement. A God is something you are supposed to trust in, and he just had his god taken, they stole his god, he didn’t have him locked up. So “you’ve taken my gods, which I made, and the priest, and ye are gone away: and what have I more? And what is this that ye say unto me, What ails thee? [25] And the children of Dan said unto him,” notice this smooth approach, “Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy household,” in other words, shut up and just be a good boy and go back to mama. You and mama get along fine so you just go back to your mama. So they took the things that Micah made and so on.

[Judges 18:26 “And the children of Dan went their way: and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back unto his house. [27] And they took the things which Micah had made, and the priest which he had, and came unto Laish, unto a people that were at quiet and secure: and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city with fire. [28] And there was no deliverer, because it was far from Zidon, and they had no business with any man; and it was in the valley that lies by Beth-rehob. And they built a city, and dwelt therein. [29] And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.]

Now at the end of all of this, in verses 30-31 there is a closing summary that is very, very important to the rest of the history of the Old Testament, because these two verses, believe it or not, show the first phase of the fall of Israel, and the fall of Israel is always due to false religion.

Judges 18:30-31, “And the children of Dan set up the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land. [31] And they set them up Micah’s graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.”

Now let’s start with the end of verse 31 and work backwards; this is the way it should logically flow, “all the time that the house of God,” that’s the real tabernacle of Moses, “was in Shiloh,” so during this time period, how long was the house of God in Shiloh? It was there from about 1390 on down to the time of Saul, around 1050. So all during the time that it was in Shiloh they had a sanctuary set up in Dan. Do you see the parallel? What’s happening here? God has His genuine religion and what does Satan always do? Counterfeit and so all the time the tabernacle was here Satan had his own tabernacle in the tribe of Dan. It was destroyed, by the way, in 1050 BC as the tabernacle itself was destroyed in Shiloh in 1050; the captivity of the land in verse 30 is not 721 BC; the captivity of the land is 1050 BC when various forces moved into the north and wiped this thing out. This was not existing in David’s time nor in Solomon’s time. They had a centralized temple in those times and such a tabernacle as this would never have been tolerated. So we have early in the history of the nation Israel a false religion on Israelite soul, using Jehovah’s name, imitating the very finished work of Jesus Christ that is depicted in the clothing of the priest and all the time its there in Dan.

Turn to Psalm 78:57 and you’ll see the divine viewpoint analysis of this whole thing. Notice how false religion got started by sincere religious people. Some of the Psalms are excellent capsule summaries of Israel’s history. Here is when both Shiloh, the bona fide tabernacle, and Dan was destroyed. “When God heard this, He was angry, and greatly abhorred Israel; [60] So that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He placed among men, [61] And delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory,” that’s the ark of the covenant, “and He delivered His glory into the enemy’s hand. [62] He gave His people over also unto the sword, and was angry with His inheritance.” Verse 64, “Their priests fell by the sword,” the destruction both of the true and the apostate religious organization, “and their widows made no lamentation.” They were glad to get rid of their kooky husbands. But verse 63 also depicts the rest of the disaster, “Fire consumed their young men; and their maidens were not given in marriage.” That’s the polite way of saying they were raped. So this is what happened to Israel at this era in 1050, just before Samuel begins to take his final effect and Saul begins to rise up.

So in all of this we see the working of God and we see a long range result of this. We see our principle, sincerity minus doctrine always equals apostasy, and apostasy always has a bad way of growing with time. All the way over in Revelation 7, when the tribes of Israel are mentioned, guess which one is not mentioned—Dan! And isn’t it strange that even in the genealogical tables of 1 Chronicles 2-12 guess what tribe is never named—Dan! See what some people did, very innocent, it started out with one believer who was negative toward the Word of God, who went by the open door policy and he started a monstrosity. He was actually used by Satan to bring into existence apostasy. So let each one of us take this lesson to heart and remember that the loyalty to the King is always by our adherence to His written Word, in the Word of God.