What God Sees Fit

S: In those days, Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit. -Judges 17:6 (NIV)

Micah shows how quickly and perhaps unintentionally people can fall away from God if God is not the King and Lord of their lives. Micah returns some silver that he has apparently stolen from his mother. She asks God to bless Micah for safely returning the silver and she consecrates the silver to the Lord. Her actions seem sincere enough but then she gives Micah a portion of the silver to make an idol to be placed in Micah's house. Even though the mother had uttered a curse against whoever stole her silver, she prays that the Lord would bless her thief of a son who has returned the silver.

Micah then hires a Levite to be his priest, presumably after the Levite leaves Bethlehem because the people were not honoring God's command to support priests. Micah is certain that the Lord will be good to him because he has hired his own personal priest.

It doesn't take long for the newly hired priest to change his allegiance. Six hundred soldiers from the tribe of Dan convince the priest that it's better to be the priest of a clan than a single man. The priest takes Micah's idol and leaves with the Danites.

When Micah placed that idol in his home and when he hired his own personal priest, he was confident that God would bless him. But it appears as if what Micah was really trying to do was manipulate God, to do his own thing, whatever he saw fit. And when those things were taken from Micah, when his priest and his idol left town, he had nothing.

This morning, I am wondering what idols are in my life. In what ways do I try to manipulate God? In what ways do I try to do whatever I want and then rationalize it by saying that it's what God would want me to do?

What about you? What if the idols in which you place more confidence than you do in God were taken away? Unfortunately, as I said in yesterday's sermon, sometimes the only way you and I learn that Jesus is all we need is when Jesus is all we have left.

May God grant you the grace to know and do what God sees fit today.


Tomorrow's readings are Judges 19-21 and 2 Corinthians 4.


P.S. This is Holy Week and if you live in the Fayetteville, TN area, I invite you to our Community Holy Week services at First Presbyterian Church at noon each day for worship and lunch. The best way to prepare our hearts and minds for the joy of Easter is to walk with Christ to the cross of Calvary.