So it seems to me that it at least feels like we are in a time of crisis as a society. It appears as if the bonds that hold us together as a nation are dissolving and we as a society are falling apart. We see it in the news, with one unthinkable shooting after another, until it becomes thinkable, one political scandal after another. We hear it in the statistics, suicide rates and drug deaths are up, trust between people and optimism for the country’s future is down. Perhaps especially troubling for those of us who believe that the gospel of Jesus is the hope for the world, there has been a massive departure away from the Christian church at numbers unlike anything we have seen before. Are we truly in a crisis of historical significance? Only the distance of history can tell, but we can at least say that it feels that way. It feels like things are falling apart.

When you face a crisis, it can be helpful to learn about what people did when facing similar things in the past. During the great Recession of 15 years ago, people looked back at stock market crash in the early 20^th century to see what could be learned. Similarly, when Covid suddenly became a pandemic, there was a lot of discussion about the flu outbreak of 1918. You’d like to think that lessons of the past might help us avoid similar situations, and sometimes they do. But sometimes what they do is help us to understand better what we’re facing, and perhaps even help us to understand a way out.

And so this fall we will consider together another period of history when God’s people saw things falling apart for them. The book of Judges is an unapologetically dark book. It depicts a when things became so bad for God’s people, when, by the end of it, things are so bleak that it is hard to see any way in which God’s people can survive. And yet this book is not without light, because, of course, they do survive. Judges is given to us to help us remember—to understand what is happening when God’s people fall apart, and to understand the way out.

This morning we’ll start our series at the end of this book, when things look bleakest and consider how it answers these two questions. What is happening? And what’s the way out? 

My guess is “What is happening” was the question on many of your minds as you heard this Scripture reading. And you’d be feeling it even more if we continued reading to the end of the book. In chapters 19-21, we encounter some of the most grotesque scenes in the Bible, involving rape, human dismemberment, a brutal civil war, and even a form of sex trafficking—and all of it is being done by the “good guys,” that is, the people of God.

We are meant to be asking as we read, “What is going on?”  

What’s Going On?

The key that is meant to orient us in these final chapters of Judges comes in 17:6. “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” A shortened version of this verse is repeated two more times, and then the very last verse of Judges is an exact repetition of 17:6 “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” This, we are meant to understand, is what is going on. This is what happens to a society when everyone does what is right in their own eyes.

Everyone was doing what was right in their eyes. In other words, this was a society where people aimed to do the right thing. It’s not a bunch of people who have stopped caring about morality and just have decided to do whatever makes it happy. No, you might say that they were well-intentioned; they wanted to be godly, righteous, good. But, and here’s the key, the way that they figured out what that good is came from within. They defined what is right, not through listening carefully to God, but according to their own instincts and understanding and feelings.

Our two chapters focus on one particular man, Micah, a wealthy man likely in his 40’s who lives in the hill country of Ephraim, a few miles north of Jerusalem. He, we will see, is a perfect example of someone who does according to what is right in his own eyes.

Part 1

Micah’s story unfolds for us in three parts. The opening 6 verses start out, well, really weird. Micah’s mom has had 1100 pieces of silver stolen from her—a fortune, 5 or 6 million dollars in modern terms. And so this woman, understandably upset, pronounces a curse upon whoever stole the money. But then her son, Micah, has a rather awkward conversation. “Um, you know that money you got so angry about that you pronounced a terrible curse on whoever took it?…Well, yeah, I kind of borrowed that silver. Here, you can have it back.”

The mother, rather than being angry, says as we see in verse 2, “Blessed be my son by the LORD.” The Lord is in caps, meaning it’s a translation of Yahweh. And then after Micah gives back the silver she says she dedicates this silver to the LORD, to Yahweh, on behalf of her son. This is a household which continues to invoke the name of the God of Israel. In fact, Micah’s name itself means, “Who is like Yahweh?” And yet notice how she dedicates this money: “I’m going to do it by making an image, an idol, a beautiful little statue depicting the Lord God.”  

And Micah is thrilled by the idea: he constructs a shrine with some other small idols and a special priestly garment called an ephod and puts this idol of Yahweh at the center. And now that he kind of has his own little meeting place with God, well, he needs a priest for it. So he has a special backyard ordination service with one of his sons, maybe one who hadn’t shown much of an ability with farming, and now he has set up a worship system in the convenience of his own home.

And here’s where we get the verse I already quoted: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” If you know anything about what is right God’s eyes, not human eyes, based on what HE has said in his word, you know that this offering, no matter how good the intentions, is actually utterly detestable, abhorrent to God. Any human representation of God, no matter how expensive, makes the true God into a puppet. When we get to choose how to depict God, not only do we make him look the way we think he should look, we inevitably we make him say the things we think he should say. When human beings get to decide how to represent God, how to think of God, the true God is silenced.

When everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes, we are meant to understand, they exchange a true relationship with God for religiosity. People still pursue spirituality, people will always desire a connection with the transcendent; people will even hold on to certain religious practices like prayer and will call God by his true name. But we can see that it’s not the real God that they know. It’s just a projection of what they want God to be like. It’s an empty act of pretending.

And when you have constructed your life in such a way that it becomes impossible to even hear the true God speak, that is catastrophic, as we’ll see.

Part 2

In the second movement, beginning in verse 7, a new character enters the scene: a Levite. Levites are the tribe of Israel specifically ordained by God to do religious duties such as performing offerings and supervising the tabernacle. And when a traveling Levite, who we will later learn is named Jonathan happens to stop by Micah’s home, Micah is thrilled. Because even though beforehand he was fine with ordaining Junior to be his priest, he knows that his personal worship pavilion really needs a Levite for it to be, well, legit. So he immediately gives the Levite a pen and puts a contract in front of his face: verse 10: “Stay with me, be a father and priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver year, clothes and lodging.”

And what does Jonathan the Levite do? He looks at the shrine with the idols, looks at the contract, and says “Deal.” Apparently, this seems right in his eyes—a man’s got to eat, after all. So Micah performs another backyard ordination ceremony—he’s getting good at them, and now he feels like he really has something here. Notice what he says in 17:13. “Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as a priest!”

Which shows you again that Micah genuinely believes in what he is doing. He has so cut himself off from what God has really said about himself that he genuinely believes that God is happy with his twisted, idolatrous practice. He is completely unaware that his relationship with God is nothing more than religiosity.    

But there’s something else here we are meant to see about what happens when people do what it right in their own eyes. It’s not just a relationship with God that becomes corrupted; human relationships with each other also are ruined.  There were hints of this in the first section: what kind of a son is happy to steal $6million bucks from his Mom? But now, consider this: what has happened to Junior, Micah’s son that he previously ordained? The Levite, it says, becomes like one of his sons, but what about his actual son? He’s forgotten, he’s cast off.

And if we were to explore the subsequent chapters, we would continue to see that this same taint upon human relationships twists the relationship between a husband and wife, between a father and his daughter. A people will protect rapists out of tribal loyalty at the expense of justice. A perverse legalism will even lead to a mass slaughter and kidnapping. When everyone does what is right in their own eyes, healthy human relationships take an enormous hit.   

Because what is right, of course, is not just a matter of personal preference or somebody’s rules. When we talk about right, we’re talking about something real, the essential ingredients in human beings living together well: things like love, justice, truthfulness. And when people lose touch with what is truly right and just base it on what seems right to them—where each person has their own different understanding of what that right is; well, how do people trust each other in that? How can relationships hold together? They can’t.  

Part 3

In chapter 18 we get to the third and longest act. The tribe of Dan enters the story: they send out spies to find a town to conquer, because this tribe still has not yet been able to take hold of the land God has given them. And these spies in their travel happen upon Jonathan the Levite at Micah’s worship center. “How did you get here?” they ask. Jonathan’s basic answer: “Well, I was made an offer that I couldn’t refuse.” And what he implies but doesn’t say is, “Unless I receive an even better offer.

So, perhaps as a trial run, the spies ask this holy man for some holy advice: verse 5: ““Inquire of God, please, that we may know whether the journey on which we are setting out will succeed.” Jonathan’s no dummy. He knows what will make them happy: “Go in peace—The journey on which you go is under the eye of the Lord.”

The men spy out a rich and undefended town of Laish—not the area, we should not, that God gave them, and come back to their tribe and say, “Let’s do it—we should be able to take the city easily.” And they also said, “Oh, and by the way, if we want to make sure we have God’s blessing with us, there’s this place with a shrine to Yahweh and their own priest—that’s worth thinking about.” So as the army travels to Laish, they make a quick detour to Micah’s house. And before Micah becomes aware of it—maybe it’s early and he’s sleeping, the spies come to the shrine to make Jonathan the Levite an even better offer—verse 19: “Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and clan in Israel?” And it says, verse 20 “The priest’s heart was glad.” It’s a career opportunity, so he himself grabs all the holy items and goes with the tribe of Dan.

And then, we presume, Micah wakes up, walks into his shrine and finds everything missing. He quickly calls for all the able-bodied men to begin a chase. They catch up with the tribe of Dan, and start shouting at them, and the leaders of Dan say, “What’s the matter with you?”

And Micah says, verse 24: “You take my gods that I made and the priest and go away, and what have I left? How then do you ask me, “What’s the matter with you.” Notice what he doesn’t say, “Hey, what you did was wrong. What you did was a sin against God.” How can you say that when, by his own admission these are the gods that he made? All he can say is, “I don’t like this.”

And the leaders of Dan, who also only do what is right in their own eyes, respond in a way that resembles mob bosses. “Hey, I hear you. Sounds tough. But, you know, you better quiet down—there are some people in our army less understanding than me who can get pretty angry, and, you know, they could really rough you up.” And what can Micah do? They’re too strong for him. He goes home without the idol he personally made or the priest he personally ordained.

Here’s the third thing we are meant to see about when everyone does what is right in their own eyes. When there is no external divine standard of what is good and right, then in the end, underneath all the pretend morality, power and wealth have the final say, and people are exploited. The Levite might act as a priest of matters related to God, but the bottom line for him is who pays the best. The tribe of Dan and Micah both might go through the motions of doing what they think is pleasing to God, but in the end what really decides things is who has the most swords. If we were to go forward to 19-21 we would see that this will spin out in very disturbing fashion, where human beings are treated like nothing more than objects. When there is no external standard of right, all that matters is power, and people are used.   

This is a tragic farce. Micah has made a personal shrine to ensure God will profit him, and it’s that shrine destroys him. The people of Dan engage in a “holy war for the LORD,” and idolatry wins, with Micah’s shrine staying in the conquered city for many centuries. And notice what this little detail about the traveling Levite. Verse 30: this is “Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses.”. Yep, that’s the Moses you’re thinking of. In just a few generations, we have gone from the leader of Israel who helped deliver God’s Law to one who seems to have completely dismissed it. This is what happens when a people do what is right in their own eyes. Relationship with God becomes religiosity. Human relationships are twisted and ruined. Power and wealth has the final say as people are exploited. A society falls apart.

I wonder if this at all sounds a bit familiar to you. Human relationships disintegrating with families falling apart, tribal loyalties becoming prominent, and trust within society dissolving? Check. The most vulnerable human lives, the poor, the unborn, the sweatshops in other countries, being exploited for the sake of the bottom line? Yep. And people shaping their view of God and religious practices based on what makes sense to them and what is comfortable to them, rather than in a way that listens to the true God? Definitely. As we look at our society and ask, “What’s happening?” Judges tells us: these things are what happen when people, often with the best of intentions, do what is right in their own eyes.

The Way Out

So what do you do when that’s what’s going on? What’s the way out?

One might think, if the problem is everyone is doing what is right in their eyes, that the way forward would be in better rules. That’s how society today often responds to its problems. Financial systems were exploited, so we add a bunch of rules and red tape. Recent movements have exposed deep issues with sexual abuse and racism, so companies institute all sorts of polices and DEI training. Again and again we see it: when people do something wrong, it’s assumed that we can fix it with more rules. Well, color me skeptical.

This is not the solution Judges offers to us. The writer of Judges does not believe more law was needed: God’s perfect law that gives freedom had already been delivered to God’s people. The problem was that people had turned from this instruction that God gave them and preferred instead to live by “their own thinking” about what is right. What’s needed, Judges tells us, is not new laws, but a new kind of leadership. What’s the refrain of 17:6? “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”

Judges says “in those days,” because this book was written long after all this happened. Likely, according to scholars, it was written during the period of Jewish exile. And so the Jews first reading this would have known that the bleak final chapters of Judges are not the conclusion to the story—that as impossibly bad as things looked for Israel, God’s people would be brought out of this by a king. God would raise up a young shepherd and anoint him to rule over Israel. King David would unite Israel’s tribes, he would bring peace and prosperity to Israel. And, most importantly he would do this by seeking to lead God’s people according to God’s law. Through a king—and not just any king, but one like David, people would be rescued from doing what was right in their eyes and brought into the good and righteous way of God.

And that means that as impossibly bad as things felt to the readers of Judges in the midst of exile, for them there still was hope. For God had promised that a king like David, greater than David will come. And a king greater than David can change everything.

The gospel we proclaim is simple. That king has come. When Jesus, God’s appointed king gave his life for us to conquer sin, when he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, his reign began, a reign so powerful that he is not only able to implement laws, he is able to connect people to God and change their hearts, so that now they do what is truly right, not because they have to, but because they love what is right, because they love God.

In Acts we are given a picture of this powerful reign. As thousands come to bend the knee to Jesus, entering into his kingdom by faith, everything changes: human relationships are restored; the strong and wealthy use their power and wealth to care for the weak. People come to know God in a real relationship of praise and obedience. People were made right under Jesus’ kingship.

And so here’s where we must leave the comparison with the book  of Judges. Because in our day, there is a king.  

 

In our moment, there’s a lot of panic. There are a lot of attempts to grab power—if only we can get our guy in office, if only we can get our rules, it will all be okay. It’s understandable: it can very much feel right now like things are falling apart, and in many ways, they are. And yet I want us to know that there is also something else going on. In pockets throughout this country, in communities often too small to get any press, people’s lives are being changed; communities are being repaired; the vulnerable are being treated with dignity, and the true God is worshiped. Why? Because in these pockets the kingship of Jesus is leading people out of the slavery that comes in doing what we think is right into the freedom found in his kingship. What I hope we will see, as we go deeper into Judges, deeper into the disfunction and decline of a nation, what I hope we will understand, is that the way out of this problem is already in this world, and it’s already happening. In fact he’s here, among us, speaking to us now. The way through this crisis, if that’s what it is, will be in coming to know who our king is, and learning to follow him with all of our lives and all of our hearts.