I'd like to start off by asking a question, Not something you
have to answer out loud, but something to think about.
If you took one thing away from your life, what would make you
feel like I don't know who I am anymore?
One thing that you would take away that would make you doubt
or make you unsure of who you are?
Maybe for you that would be your coffee.
I know at Junior Youth some of us leaders have joked that we
wouldn't know who we are without caffeine in our systems.
But on a more serious note, maybe it's your job, the
position that you hold at work. Maybe it's your hobbies, the
things that you are slightly better at than most others.
Maybe it would be your family, your parents, your kids.
These different areas of our life make up who we are.
Our work, our hobbies, our interests, our likes, our
dislikes, our family and friends.
They're all pieces of the puzzle that come together to form and
describe who we are. But what happens if one of those
pieces gets taken away? If you've ever tried to complete
a puzzle with and would have a missing piece, you'll know the
frustration of not being able to have a whole finished puzzle.
That feeling of incompleteness. You may even spend a significant
amount of time looking for that one missing piece just so that
you can complete the puzzle. For myself, I know if something
is lost, or at least if I can't find it, I'll spend hours
looking for it. Even if I don't need it at that
time, I have to know where it is.
I can't let it go. I have to find what I'm looking
for. And that's how I see our life
sometimes, as a combination of puzzle pieces that all come
together to form who we are. But the problem with that, and
at least for me, is that we begin to see ourselves as less
than and incomplete if we lose a piece.
If you were the athletic guy or girl and you can no longer
perform to the level that you were once able to, you may feel
like you're not completely you anymore.
If you were the hardest, toughest worker on the job site
and someone shows up and outworks you, you may feel like
you've lost a piece of you. Contrary to what Elsa sings
about in the movie Frozen, it's not that easy to just let it go.
Those these are real things in our life and they've probably
been there for a long time and letting go of them could be very
difficult. But as we look into Judges
chapter 17 and 18 this morning, we will see the danger of not
letting go. And when I speak of not letting
go or speak of letting go, I don't mean that we need to stop
having hobbies, quit our jobs, or stop loving our friends and
our family. What I mean is that we should
not use those things as replacement for God.
Through the passage, we will read today that seeking idols
leads to craving control, cascading consequences, and
compromised convictions, and we need to let go of the idols and
hold fast to God. Before we go to our Scripture
this morning, let's pray. Lord.
God, we thank you for this morning and for the singing that
has already taken place and for the conversations I trust were
helpful and edifying before the service.
Lord, it's a privilege to come together here as a body of
believers. And Lord, as we look deeper into
your word this morning to Judges chapter 1718, I pray for
understanding and honesty that we will rightly understand the
Scriptures and that we will be honest to examine ourselves and
to see if there are idols in our lives that we are seeking as
replacements for you. We ask in Jesus name, Amen.
So as I mentioned, we'll be reading Judges chapters 17 and
18. In the past couple weeks, we've
read the tragic stories of Samson and Jephtha.
They were two major judges of Israel and each one of them had
deep character flaws, but still God works through them not
because of who they were, but because of who God is in His
character. The Israelites have continued to
go through this cycle of rebellion against God, followed
by oppression from the outside enemies, and then finally
deliverance from God by the hands of a human judge.
When we pick up in Judges 17, there is no judge though, no
deliverer for the people. The previous chapter showed
flawed deliverers and today we will see a flawed people group.
In the previous chapters, the main threats against Israel came
from the outside, from external people groups, but in today's
passage, the threat against Israel comes from the inside,
from their own people. The Israelites are a group of
people that constantly turn to idol worship instead of
worshiping the God that brought them out of the land of Egypt.
Idolatry was frequent and it was a consistent sin for the
Israelites and today's reading is no different.
Through the passage today we will look at what seeking idols
can lead to. So with that, let's read Judges
chapter 17 verses one through 6. There was a man in the Hill
Country of Ephraim whose name was Micah.
And he said to his mother, the 1100 pieces of silver that were
taken from you, about which you uttered a curse and also spoke
it in my ears, Behold, the silver is with me.
I took it. And his mother said, Blessed be
the son by the Lord. And he restored the 1100 pieces
of silver to his mother. And his mother said, I dedicate
the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son to make a carved
image and a metal image. Now, therefore I will restore it
to you. So when he restored the money to
his mother, his mother took the 200 pieces of silver and gave it
to the silversmith who made it into a carved image and a metal
image. And it was in the House of
Micah. And the man Micah had a shrine
and he made an ephod in household gods and ordained one
of his sons who became his priest.
In those days there was no king in Israel.
Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Here in Judges 17 were introduced to a man named Micah.
This isn't the prophet Micah that will read that you can read
about later in the Bible, but a separate individual from the
Hill Country of Ephraim. And one thing that we can see
from the account of Micah is that seeking idols leads to
craving control. The story of Micah starts off
with him admitting to his mother that he was the one that stole
the 1100 pieces of silver. We don't know why he took it,
but we know that the mom was pretty upset over it.
Upset enough that it says she uttered a curse over it.
But then in a turn of events, the mother does not rebuke her
son for stealing, but rather she tells him that he is blessed.
She then uses the She then uses some of the silver to have a
carved image and a metal image made as idols.
What the mother is trying to do here is to control her family.
She should have disciplined her son for what he did, but instead
of confronting the sin, she glosses over it.
Instead of confronting, she comforts.
The Bible doesn't explain her reasoning, but I think it's safe
to say that she had an ideal for what her son should be and for
what her family should be. She doesn't want to be the
mother of a son who stole from her, and so she decides to
become the mother of a son who has done no wrong.
She couldn't control the actions of her son, so instead she
attempts to control the perception of it.
She ignores the sin that took place in her own home and
instead pretends that it didn't happen.
She even uses religious language as a cover and claims that she
will dedicate this money to the Lord.
But then she goes and has idols created for worship.
But the real idol for the mother is not the carved images, it's
her son. She will bend and break the laws
of God so that she can keep control of her son.
After all, if she scolds her son and disciplines him, he might
get angry and leave. Then she would have no control
of him. She sacrifices what is right to
keep the relationship she has with her son and Micah.
He also craves control of his family and after creating an
ephod in these household gods, he goes and ordains one of his
own sons to become his own personal priest.
Michael want Micah wants to keep his son close and for someone to
approve of his actions, and what better way than to give that
ability to his own son? Of course, his son was not
qualified to be a priest as he wasn't a descendant of Aaron or
even a Levite, but that didn't matter much to Micah.
Micah wanted control and he would do what was necessary to
have it. If we continue reading, we see
that seeking after idols also leads Micah to crave control of
his worship. Let's read verses 7 through 12.
Now there was a young man of Bethlehem and Judah of the
family of Judah, who was a Levite.
And he sojourned there. And the man departed from the
town of Bethlehem and Judah to sojourn where he could find a
place. And as he's, as he journeyed, he
came to the Hill Country of Ephraim, to the House of Micah.
And Micah said to him, where do you come from?
And he said to him, I am a Levite of Bethlehem and Judah.
I'm going to sojourn where I find where I may find a place.
Micah said to him, Stay with me and be to me a father and a
priest. Now we'll give you 10 pieces of
silver a year and a suit of clothes and a suit of clothes
and your living. And the Levite went in.
The Levite was content to dwell with the man, and the young man
became to him like one of his sons.
And Micah ordained the Levite, and the young man became his
priest and was in the House of Micah.
So at first, this kind of seems like a solution to Micah's
problem. Micah finds a Levite who we
don't know much about yet, and he hires them as his own
personal priest. In one sense, this setup was
better because this man was actually a Levite, but Micah's
intention for hiring him are selfish.
Again, Micah wants to control how he worships.
To this point, Micah has created a shrine and ephod and household
gods and has now hired his own personal priest to have control
of how he worships. In other words, idolatry led him
to the led him to create the place where he worships, led him
to create the items of his worship, all while being
supported by the person he put in charge of the worship.
Kind of like a build-a-bear workshop of worship.
And it wasn't like that was his only option.
The Tabernacle was in Shiloh and it was accessible for him to go
worship there as he was supposed to do.
But instead he creates his own place to worship how he sees
fit. He creates an ephod, a sacred
garment that was only to be worn by the priests and the ephod by
itself. It was a good thing, it was
ordained by God. But like the ephod that Gideon
created in few chapters prior, it became an idol.
He then hires this priest and again there was priests in
Shiloh, but he hires this Levite in attempt to buy the blessing
from God. Verse 13 then it shows the end
of Micah's craving for control. Seeking after idols leads Micah
to craving control of God himself.
Verse 13 says Then Micah said, Now I know that the Lord will
prosper me because I have a Levite as a priest.
Micah believes that because he now has this Levite as a priest
that God will bless him. Micah is trying to control how
God works. I'm sure if you could go back
and ask Micah, he wouldn't say that he's trying to control God,
but his actions tell a different story.
Micah was not content with the true worship that God had
instructed, and he tried to create his own rules, but at the
same time, he still wants God's blessing for how he goes about
it. Craving control is a dangerous
mentality. It focuses everything on me and
it leaves no room for anything else.
It prevents you from seeing reality and instead it replaces
what is real with what is imagined.
There's a story of a new boss who wants to clean shop and get
rid of workers who aren't productive.
One day he sees a young man leaning on the wall not doing
anything and he asked him, what are you doing?
Just waiting to get paid, Is the answer that comes from the young
man. The boss asks, how much money do
you make? About $250, says the worker.
The boss pulls out a lot of cash and quickly counts off $1000
bills. Here's 4 weeks pay, the boss
says. Now get out of here, I don't
want to see you again. Feeling quite emboldened, the
boss turns to his employees and the surrounding area and he asks
them, Can anyone tell me what just happened here?
And a voice pops up from the back.
You just tipped the pizza delivery guy.
The boss's idol in this case was power.
He wanted everyone to feel like he was the head honcho, and
seeking that idol of power caused him to crave control of
his people, which ultimately made him look like a fool and do
something he probably would never would have done elsewise.
Micah and his mother not might not have started trying to
crave, might not have started trying to control God, but
seeking after idols LED both Micah and his mother to reject
God and crave control of their family, of their worship, and
ultimately of God. Micah and his mother use some of
the right language and they have parts of what is real in their
worship, but they combine it with things that are forbidden
by God. We see examples in the Bible
where something is created for good, but it gets corrupted by
evil and judges. We see the example of the Ephod
being used as something to worship in First Samuel.
We see the Ark of the covenant being used as a good luck charm.
And then in Second Kings we see the bronze serpent, the one that
God told Moses to build for the sick people to look at and be
healed. We see it being torn down
because the people of Israel started to make offerings to it.
Those are all examples of religious confusion and improper
worship of people trying to maneuver their way to God.
Like Micah, they want the approval of God without the
rules of God. And doesn't that sound like a
pretty common situation in our time, too?
Yeah, I'll come to church on Sunday, so long as I don't have
to wake up too early. And I had better have a good
parking spot. And the coffee better tastes
good. And they better sing the songs I
like. Sure, we might say we want to
worship God, but so long as it's on our terms.
I want the blessings of God, but don't expect me to follow any of
His rules. That as we will see, it didn't
work out for Micah and it doesn't work out for us either.
Our family, our friends, the church building, and the various
things that are in the church are good things.
But when we hold on to those things and we make idols out of
those things by prioritizing them over God, we are in danger
of of craving control of God. The next danger we see in
seeking idols is that seeking idols leads to cascading
consequences. Cascading means something
happens in a way that it follows or spread step by step, where
one thing leads to another, like a chain reaction.
You can think of it like dominoes lined up.
When you push one domino over, it knocks over the next one,
which knocks over the next one, and so on and so on.
One action causes many others, and that's really what the whole
book of Judges is. But specifically we'll see that
here in Judges Chapter 18, chapter 18, verse one, it reads,
in those days there was no king in Israel.
And in those days the tribe of the people of Dan was seeking
for itself an inheritance to dwell in.
For until then, no inheritance among the tribes of Israel had
fallen to them. The first step or the first
domino to fall was that the Danites were ran from
responsibility. The Danites were a tribe of
Israel stabbing from Dan, one of Jacob's sons.
And last week we heard the account of Samson.
Samson was from the tribe of Dan.
He too was a Danite. And the Danites and the Danites,
along with the rest of the tribes of the, along with the
rest of the tribes of Israel, except for the Levites, had been
allotted a portion of the land of Canaan, the land that would
become Israel. But they didn't take that land
that was originally allotted to them back in Joshua 19.
If we remember back to Judges chapter one, it says the
Amorites press the people of Dan back into the Hill Country for
they did not allow them to come down to the plain.
The Danites did not dare to go against the iron Chariots of the
Canaanites. And so they were forced back
into the Hill Country and were not able to, or more accurately
chose not to take possession of the entire land that they were
given. The previous sin of not trusting
God to give them victory came back to have consequences.
The domino cannot be knocked over without knocking over
others as well. And that's true of all sin.
It comes with consequences. When the Danites chose to run
from their responsibility to reject God's plan and hold on to
that idol of safety and security, they didn't
immediately feel the consequences, but the
consequences still came. Paul writing to the Galatians in
chapter 6, verse seven and eight, he puts it this way.
He says do not be deceived, God is not locked.
For whatever one sows that will he also reap.
For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap
corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the
Spirit reap eternal life. There's no such thing as casual
sin. Sin will always lead to more
sin, as was the case with the Danites.
Their lack of trust and rebellion LED them to not take
the land, which would then lead them down to further sin.
The next domino to fall was that the Danites sought direction
from God without having devotion to God.
Let's read verses two to six. So the people of Dan sent 5 able
men from the whole number of their tribe, from Zora and from
Ishtaol to spy out the land and to explore it.
And they said to them, Go and explore the land.
And they came to the Hill Country of Ephraim, to the House
of Micah, and lodged there. When they were that by the House
of Micah they recognized the voice of the young Levite.
And they turned aside and said to him, Who brought you here?
What are you doing in this place?
What is your business here? And he said to them, This is how
Micah dealt with me, he has hired me, and I have become his
priest. And they said to him, Inquire of
God, please, that we may know whether the journey on which we
are setting out will succeed. And the priest said to them, Go
in peace. The journey on which you go is
under the eye of the Lord. The Danites, they, they send
spies out to the Hill Country of Ephraim where Micah was, and
they find this Levite there and they question him.
The Levite explains the situation and the setup he has
with Micah. And then the Danites asked the
Levite to inquire of God for them.
The Danites were Israelites. They would have known that this
arrangement that Micah had formed with this Levite priest
was improper, but they show no hesitation to it.
In fact, they welcome it. The Danites too.
They had access to go to Shiloh and to seek directions from the
priest there, but they chose not to do that.
They were already on their way to go spy out the land when they
happened to come across this Levite.
It seems like they had already decided what they wanted to do,
but now that they had the opportunity, they also wanted
God's blessing. Like Micah in the previous
chapter, they had not devoted themselves to following God's
command and instructions, but they still want the blessings
from Him. The idol they are seeking here
is themselves a common theme for the Danites.
As it turns out, Samson, as mentioned, who is also a Danite
and though instructed by God, consistently chose to follow His
own desires rather than the guidelines laid out by God.
Self idolatry is spread all throughout the history of the
Danites and it always led to greater sin.
The priest ends up telling them go in peace, but the wording
leaves some uncertainty. He says the journey on which you
go is under the eye of the Lord. He does not say that it is
approved by God, but rather that God sees it.
But the Danites having no objection to this corrupted
priest, they continue on their journey taking yet more steps in
their sin. The next step that we will see
from the Danites is that they chose comfort over obedience.
In verses 7 to 10, the spies go to Laish and they find people in
wealth and security. Let's read those verses 7 to 10.
Then the five men departed and came to Laish and saw the people
who were there, how they lived in security after the manner of
the Sidonians, quiet and unsuspecting, lacking nothing,
that is in the earth, and possessing wealth, and how they
were far from the Sidonians and had no dealings with anyone.
And when they came to their brothers at Zora and Ishtaol,
their brother said to them, What do you report?
They said, arise and let us go up against them, for we have
seen the land and behold, it is very good.
And will you do nothing? Do not be slow to go to enter in
and possess the land. As soon as you go you will come
to an unsuspecting people. The land is spacious, for God
has given it into your hands a place where there is no lack of
anything that is in the earth. So the Dayanites in the cowardly
move, they see the land of Laish, and they see that it is
lacking nothing and filled with unsuspecting people.
They see that this land will be easy for them to take as
compared to the land that they were originally allotted.
They assume, probably because of what the Levi priest said, that
God wants them to have it. And God had instructed many
years prior that the Israelites were supposed to drive out all
inhabitants of the land of Canaan, but the Israelites had
failed to do so. But now when it's comfortable
and when it's convenient to them, they decide that God must
be with them in an agreement with their choices.
We see again that idolatry on display here.
They reject God and they replace him when they don't want to
listen. But when it favors them, they
use the name of God to condone what they want.
Around the 1820s, Thomas Jefferson, who's a former
president of the US, he famously took a razor blade to the Bible
and he literally cut out sections that he didn't agree
with. He cut out every miracle, the
virgin birth, the resurrection, and any reference to Jesus
deity. He kept in Jesus ethical
teachings, the parables and moral instructions like loving
your enemies. So Thomas Jefferson liked Jesus,
just not the parts that didn't fit into his worldview.
So he made a virgin that felt reasonable to him.
Many of those who professed Christ in today's age will do
something similar. They want the parts of the Bible
that aligned to their worldview, that condone their actions, but
they want nothing to do with the Bible that calls for repentance.
They want the grace without the judgement.
They want the love without the holiness, the comfort without
the obedience. They in fact don't want Jesus as
God. They want themselves as God and
for Jesus to submit to them. It's why culturally it's
acceptable to say things like I love God as well as while still
living as if his rules don't apply to you.
This is so prevalent today and I'm sure you see this online, at
work, or even in your friends and family.
When they don't like what God says, they don't usually
abandoned the idea of God, but they just change him.
They take a metaphorical razor blade, razor blade to the parts
of the Bible that call out their sin and create a God for
themselves that is OK with everything they are doing.
But it's not just those people out there that are doing this.
We too do this. When we seek after idols as
replacements for God, we're doing the same thing.
Jerry Bridges in his book The Pursuit of Holiness, writes God
does not require a perfect sinless life to have fellowship
with him. But he does require that we be
serious about holiness, that we grieve over sin in our lives
instead of justifying it, and that we earnestly pursue
holiness as a way of life. And that's what we see missing
here in the story of the Danites.
There was no grief over their sin.
They just continued to justify it and continue to seek after
idols regardless of the consequences that come from it.
So we've seen that seeking after idols can lead to craving,
control, and cascading consequences.
Finally, we'll see that seeking after idols can lead to
compromise convictions. A conviction, when used in this
way, means an unwavering certainty in one's beliefs.
When we seek after idols, those idols will compromise or weaken
our beliefs, and when we are weaken our beliefs, we are more
susceptible to the temptations of the evil. 1 as we pick up the
story after the five spies report that the land of Laish is
ripe for the picking, 600 armed men set out for the from the
Hill Country with their sights on overtaking Laish.
On their way, they stop at Michael's Micah's place in.
The five spies tell the rest of the men, but the household gods
that he has there, they decide that they're going to take these
idols for themselves. And as a 600 men stand watch the
five spies go and take these idols.
Let's pick up at verses 18, verse 18.
And when these and when these went into Micah's house and took
the carved image, the ephod and the household gods and the metal
image, the priest said to him, what are you doing?
And they said to him, keep quiet, put your hand on your
mouth, and come with us and be to us a father and a priest.
Is it better for you to be a priest to the House of one man
or to be a priest to a tribe and clan in Israel?
And the priest's heart was glad. He took the ephod in the
household gods in the carved image, and he went along with
the people. The priest here is an example of
how seeking idols can lead to compromise convictions.
When our convictions become compromised, we'll hurt
ourselves in the process. The men of Dan decide that they
need these household gods, and when the Levite tries to object,
they threaten him and then they entice him.
They tell him to keep quiet, and in the same sentence they offer
him a job to come with them. They tempt him using power and
money. This is actually prophesied in
Genesis. When Jacob is blessing his sons
in Genesis 49, he says Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a Viper
by the path that bites the horse's heels, so that this
rider falls backwards like the servant serpent tempted Eve in
the Garden of Eden. The tribe of Dan is used here to
tempt this priest, and it says in verse 20 that the priest's
heart was glad he had compromised so much on his
convictions already by being a priest to an individual man, by
condoning idol worship, that when this temptation came, he
didn't even put up a fight. As Christians today, we must be
aware of this tactic too, the tactic of using fear and control
and then ultimately enticing to get cooperation and compliance.
When we are fearful, it's good to question where is this fear
coming from? Is it real, and what should I do
as a response to it? Giving into that fear may feel
right, but it can lead to a slow compromise of your convictions.
Compromise convictions. They also hurt others.
In verses 21 to 26, the men of Dan leave and the people from
Micah's group. They chase after them, an
attempt to rescue their gods. Doesn't that sound backwards
that they rescue? They try to rescue their gods.
I read a humorous commentary at a humorous note in a commentary
that said one should never have a God that needs protection.
Clearly these were no gods at all, but nevertheless, Micah and
his fellows. They want them back, but when
they see that they are overpowered, they tuck tail and
turn around. Then picking up in verse 27, we
see how the compromise of idolatry, it hurts others.
But the people of Dan took what Micah had made, and the priest
who belonged with him, belonged to him.
And they came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting,
and struck them with the edge of the sword and burned the city
with fire. And there was no deliverer
because it was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with
anyone. It was in the valley that
belongs to Bethroub. Then they rebuilt the city and
lived in it. These people on Sidon were part
of a group of people that God had commanded generations prior
to drive out. But the way this is count is
told in the progressing evil of the book of Judges, it makes it
makes you wonder, were the Israelites acting more like the
Canaanites than the Canaanites actually were?
The Dananites weren't keeping the Danites weren't keeping the
covenant that God had made with Israel, but instead they were
doing whatever they thought was right and their compromise, it
led to hurt generations after them.
As is the case with unrepentant sin and compromise, it can
trickle down and leave a legacy of hurt and sorrow.
Verse 29 says that they name the name the city Dan after the
after the name of Dan, their ancestor.
This would be the same city that years later Jeroboam would build
a golden calf for the Israelites to worship.
An attempt for the an attempt to keep the people from leaving and
fleeing to the South. They changed the name of the
city, but they didn't change the culture.
They continued to worship idols instead of God.
And then finishing this chapter, verses 30 to 31 read and the
people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves.
And Jonathan the son of Gersham, son of Moses and his sons were
priests, the tribe of the Danites until the day of
captivity of the land. So they set up Micah's carved
image that he made as long as the House of God was at Shiloh.
So it's not until the end of this chapter that we find out
who this Levite is. It says, it says his name was
Jonathan, and he was the great grandson of Moses, the same
Moses that led Israelites out of Egypt, out of bondage and
slavery, who tore down the golden calf in the desert, and
he told the people to turn away from idols.
His grandson is the one approving of and facilitating
this idol worship. We don't know what happened to
make him become OK with idol worship, but I think we can
safely assume it started with small compromises of his
convictions. And as we see, the carved image
stayed in the new city of Dan until the exile from Israel.
The compromise convictions of this priest in this case led to
hurting himself by approving something he knew was wrong.
It hurt others by leading others to believe what they were doing
was right. And finally, it left a legacy of
sin for generations to come. But for us today, compromising
on our convictions can seem like it's no big deal.
Especially when we look at stories like the 1 today, it can
be tempting to think, well, that was a different time.
That doesn't apply to us today. But while we may not worship at
the feet of a carved image, we do worship the very same idol
that the people of Israel did back then.
The idol of me. In fact, I think self idolatry
is the sin from which most other sins flow.
Self idolatry twist the proper order of worship and it puts
self ahead of everything, including God.
And when we start to become aware of this sin, we will see
it everywhere. We hear phrases like my body, my
choice, do whatever makes you happy and follow your heart.
But these are all forms of self idolatry and scripture does not
teach them. The world says my body my
choice, but the Bible says you belong to God.
First Corinthians 619 to 20 says Or do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have
from God? You are not your own, for you
were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
The world says do whatever makes you happy, but the Bible says Do
whatever makes you holy. First Peter 114 to 16 As
obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of
your former ignorance, but as he who called you as holy, you also
be holy in your conduct, since it is written you shall be holy,
for I am holy. The world says follow your
heart, but the Bible says follow Christ.
Jeremiah 17/9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately sick. Who can understand it?
And then Luke 923 Jesus says, if anyone would come after me, let
him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.
These phrases from the world seem harmless, but they're
rooted in sin. They make you the main object of
focus and attention, and the only way to combat them is to be
rooted in Scripture. As Christians, then, we need to
let go of the idol of selfishness and worldly
attraction and pursue Christ, holy Christ, not the world.
And the more we understand Jesus, the more we will become
like Him. And instead of compromising on
our convictions, we will be strengthened in them.
If you've been around me long enough in the past few months,
you've probably heard me talk about the story of the Edmund
Fitzgerald. And my wife might be rolling her
eyes somewhere right now because she's heard this a lot.
I'm not a huge history buff, but this, this story fascinates me.
The Edmund Fitzgerald was a large American freight ship, and
at the time when it launched in the 1950s, it was the largest
ship on the Great Lakes, measuring 729 feet long.
It was used to carry 27,000 tons of iron ore from Wisconsin to
Detroit. A massive ship like this was
used to move materials cheaply and efficiently, and they made a
lot of money doing so. But like most ships back then,
they didn't make money if they weren't moving and so as you can
imagine, this caused many captains to be fearless in the
fit in the midst of storms. But on November 10th, 1975, the
Edmund Fitzgerald with its 29 crew on board set sail for what
was supposed to be a routine trip.
It was the last trip of the nine month season and the final trip
for his for this captain before his retirement.
But it turned out to be anything but routine.
This large ship ended up getting stuck in a storm with hurricane
light winds and Blizzard conditions.
There were waves of 30 feet high.
It was a storm that made many sailors religious.
Was one quote from a captain who had headed out and shortly after
turned back. But at about 3:30 in the
afternoon, the captain of this, Edmund Fitzgerald, called to a
nearby ship to notify that it had taken significant damage,
but they were still moving. Throughout the afternoon and
early evening, the safety railings, the navigation, the
lights, and all other equipment would proceed to stop working.
The storm and the waves were so big that the ship was lost off
the radar as well. At about 7:00 PM, the nearby
ship captain radioed in and asked, How are you making out
with your problems? The response from the captain of
the Fitzgerald came. We are holding our own.
I suspect the captain might have known at that point that the
inevitable, the inevitable future of the boat and of his
men. And I also suspect that he knew
that there was nothing that could be done for them at that
point. That short sentence we are
holding our own was the last thing that was ever heard from
the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald never made it to
safer waters. It sank about 27 kilometers away
from Whitefish Bay and it took down all 29 people on board.
For the captain and crew of that ship, there was nothing humanly
speaking, that could be done for them at that point.
But where this strikes a chord for me, and where I think it
ties into this passage in Judges, is because I think we
often find ourselves in situations where we feel like we
are holding our own. The 30 foot waves of depression,
addiction and suffering come crashing over us.
The human made safety railings break and there's no longer
anything separating the deep waters from the safe landing.
The bright shining and glimmer from the things that we used to
seek and desire begin to grow dim and they fade.
Our own navigation is broken and disoriented.
When life turns out different than we had imagined.
We isolate ourselves and we take ourselves off the radar from
those willing and wanting to help.
And then we walk into church on Sunday morning and someone asks
how are you? And we reply, I'm good, I'm
holding my own. I don't think we're capable of
holding our own, and I don't think we were created to be.
Sure, we can go through life seeking idols and using those as
temporary replacements for God, and there's many people that
will do that for their whole life.
But that's not holding our own. That's outsourcing our happiness
and contentment to whatever the next thing is.
When we seek and hold on to idols in our life, we'll at some
point find ourselves realizing that idols don't satisfy.
And that's not profound. We know this.
We know that it can lead to craving control, We know it
leads to costly consequences, and we know that it will lead to
compromise convictions. But yet that temptation, it's
real and it's strong. The invitation to let go of the
idols and hold fast to God is not to remove joy and happiness,
but to provide a safe boundary for those to grow and thrive in
a relationship with God. And I would say true joy and
peace can only come from knowing Christ.
But Jesus isn't just another puzzle piece to add to our life
in hopes of making it whole. Without Jesus, we have no life
by ourselves. We are hopeless and dead in our
sins, enslaved by the idols that hold us captive.
But in Jesus there is life that no idol can give.
Psalm 41 says God is our refuge and strength, a very present
help and trouble. Jesus came to the world to save
us from our sins, but he doesn't leave us to fight by ourselves.
As Christians, He has given us his Spirit to guide us and to
convict us when we do wrong. Our response then should be to
let go of the things that we are trying to hold onto, to all the
things that promised us life, but ultimately bring death and
instead, as it is written, be still and know that I am God.
Let's pray. God, You are our refuge and our
strength, a very present help and trouble.
Apart from You, Lord, we have nothing.
As we read today, there are many sorrows for those that seek
after idols instead of seeking after you.
Lord, I pray that we are not those people, but rather that we
will be a people that seek You at all times.
That we can say with the psalmist, I have set the Lord
before me because he is at my right hand.
I shall not be shaken. May that be true of us, that we
will not compromise on our convictions, but rather hold
fast to Your word. It's in Your name that we pray.
Amen.