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Now to the two epilogues in the book of Judges. They are full of detail, but the lesson they teach is a simple, if grave, lesson. They tell us of the breakdown in Israel of two institutions. The institution of the Levitical order and the breakdown of the all-tribal assembly. We are not to think, of course, on the basis of the two instances that are given us, one about the Levites and one about the all-tribal assembly, that those two institutions were throughout their length and breadth corrupt, or that they always behaved in this unfortunate manner. But the writer is de- de- de- uh, pursuing his thesis that in the third generation, Israel seriously declined. Moreover, in the cyclical experience of the nation, though the circle came round from time to time to recovery over long periods of years, nevertheless, when the cycle declined once more into apostasy, the apostasy was always worse than on the previous occasion. And these instances of the breakdown of the Levitical order and of the practice of the all-tribal assembly are specimens, straws in the wind, maybe, to show us how things eventually went. In addition to that, these two episodes are marked by the recurrent phrase, there was no king in Israel. Each man did that which was right in his own eyes. We must be careful how we interpret the intention of the author in making those remarks. Obviously, he was an author who approved of kingship. And he suggests that had there been a king at this particular time, perhaps not every man would have been free to do in his own eyes as they did in these advanced days. I do not myself suppose that we ought to take for granted that the inspired historian is telling us that kingship ought to have been established in Israel from the very first, or that he would have disagreed with Israel's original theocracy. The theocracy did work, and worked for some centuries. And as late as Gideon, you hear that great reformer, judge, deliverer, and savior deter- uh, declaring publicly his intention to stand by the principle according to which his nation has so far lived, that of a direct theocracy, in which, while the people had a center, that center was the tabernacle and not a royal throne, a royal household, such as David's later became. And that the nation, taking God seriously and submitting themselves to his rule deliberately out of set choice and with sincerity, the nation prospered over many years. What happened was that that system of government to direct theocracy, was open to abuse. When people who professed to be ruled by the living God and not by a king came to lose reverence for that living God, and they had an outward form of godliness, but by their life denied the power thereof, then of course their professed theocra- theocracy became a mere sham, an empty shell, and led to impossible confusion. Instead of each man doing the will of the Lord and seeking the will of the Lord and to be governed directly by the Lord for himself, his family and tribe, it, uh, became a perversion of that, with each man doing exactly as he pleased, without restraint or government of any kind. Those of us who, from our youth, have lived in assemblies that have, uh, lived on this principle of a direct theocracy, the direct lordship of Christ and the accountability of the local church directly to the living Lord and not to some earthly headquarters or organization, could take a special lesson, a very profitable lesson, from the end chapters of Judges here. If people who order their church life on the principle of direct responsibility to the risen Lord Jesus seriously believe in his government, submit themselves willingly to his lordship, know his presence in their midst, and live lives devoted to him, determined to do his will. There is, of course, no better government on earth. It is God's own design for his people in this present day. But it is all too possible, my brethren, to have the form of godliness and deny the power thereof. For our reverence of God, our knowledge of God to wane, for the awe of his majesty to disappear, for the priesthood to fail, for simple self-will and self-centeredness to prevail. And with that, while we may retain the externals of a direct theocracy, it is all too possible to have a perversion in reality, with each man doing exactly as he pleased in his own eyes. So now we come to the first epilogue, and we are straightway introduced to a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. And what a glorious name he bore, so full of truth and tradition. His name is, in fact, a whole sentence in Hebrew. It means who is like unto Jehovah. It expresses the incomparable God. The question, who is like unto Jehovah, is, of course, a rhetorical question. It is not asking information. It is making a statement, and a very categorical statement at that. It is saying that there is none like Jehovah. He is utterly unique and incomparable. This is the great glory of Israel's faith. This is the thing that distinguished them from all the Gentile nations around, sunk as they were in their crass polytheism, or worse. It is the glorious doctrine proclaimed by God through prophets like Isaiah, where God says, I am and there is none beside. Where are there any other gods but me? The uniqueness of Jehovah. Israel early on were taught it. The very opening words of the Old Testament proclaim it. There there is no multitude of gods, but one transcendent God creator. Israel learned his uniqueness at the Red Sea, as God triumphed and put to shame all the gods of Egypt and showed himself the incomparable and only God. And they sang, who is like Jehovah? As we consider Israel and how they stood out distinctive amongst their contemporaries. We should notice the evidence now staring us in our eyes that Israel did not invent this doctrine of monotheism. It has been the theory advanced in recent times in this century by social anthropologists, that the way that monotheism, belief in one God, arose was by the process of evolution. Just as the world evolved, they argued, so does religion evolve. The primitive mankind were all animists, thinking that the rocks, the trees, the waters, the rivers, the sun, the moon, and the stars were all inhabited by spirits. Animists. Japanese, on the whole, are still animists. And then, according to the theory, man evolved from animism to polytheism. Many gods. More in human form. From polytheism, they evolve further to hentheism, one god per tribe, one god per nation. And then they evolve from hentheism to monotheism, one god over all the world. And then, of course, if they had any sense, they'd evolve beyond that to atheism. There aren't any gods at all. The theory is false, gentlemen. Not only does the evidence go the other way as we study history, but look at Israel herself and ask yourself where she got this idea of monotheism from. She surely didn't invent it. For the Old Testament s- s- uh, spends acres of its material telling us that Israel, far from inventing monotheism, were forever departing from it, sliding away from it into the miserable idolatries and polytheisms of the surrounding nations, and ever and again having to be pulled back by the roots of their hair, by stern prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and rebuked for their apostasies. Pulled back and driven back by the prophetic voice and by the disciplines of God, back to the original monotheism that had been revealed to them by the living God himself. They did not invent the doctrine, any more than Paul, uh, the- than the- the church invented the doctrine of justification by faith. And Luther didn't invent it either. The fact is that the doctrine of justification by faith was preached from the very first. Christendom has shown a permanent tendency to slide away back from it into the natural religion of justification by one's merit. When Luther preached justification by faith, he wasn't inventing it, gentlemen. It wasn't that now this glorious doctrine had evolved. It was a matter of taking Christianity back to its original revelation. So we meet Micah. I suppose it was the piety of his parents that gave him this name, for he surely didn't choose it for himself. Mikiyahu, who is like unto Jehovah? It was the habit in ancient Israel to give children names inspired by Israelite faith or experience. And sometimes the children lived up to their name. That was true of that other famous Micah in the Old Testament, whose name stands at the head of a prophetic book, the prophet Micah. He too was named by his parents, presumably, Mikayahu, who is like unto Jehovah. And I suppose in his early years, the name meant very little to him. Was the habit in Christendom, until things changed, for parents to give their children Christian names. Some with Christian names live to become Christian. How many folks there are who have Christian names, not even aware they are Christian names, and as for the reality behind them, know nothing of it at all. Micah was different. As he grew up, he grew up into personal experience of God, wonderful and glorious, and ended his prophecy by signing his very name into the doctrine of his prophecies. Who is a pardoning God like thee, said Micah, the incomparable God, in his creation, incomparable in his redemption, incomparable in his forgiveness even of his erring people. Who is a pardoning God like thee that passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again and have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities under foot, and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. The incomparable God of forgiveness. Well, do we in our Christian day sing, who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free? What a sorry story of decline meets us in the Micah of the book of Judges. Bearing so fair a name, he has a little story to tell us. Do you know, he says, I have a very interesting museum in my house, um, a collection of gods. You know, that old idea that Moses used to spin, that's out of date now, you know, uh, that rigid monotheism, that arrogancy, that, uh, evangelical imperialism, making out that our God is the only God, when of course everybody can see in this modern age that there's truth in all religions. And what you want to do is to gather all you can from all the religions I have done, and I've got this marvelous collection in my house of gods, you'll see. It is just this, that, uh, collecting a lot of gods can be expensive, and I have to admit that I was tempted at one stage, and I stole a big whack of silver from my mama, uh, uh, to buy a few more gods and keep up my museum of gods, shall you see, he said. And, uh, then when, uh, my mother pronounced a curse, Dorsey, upon anybody who had stolen this, uh, silver, I was moved in conscience, and I felt in conscience bound to to admit it, and I confessed it, you know. Uh, confession is a very good thing. And when my mama heard that, she was delighted, and she said, blessed be thou of the Lord. I am so relieved to find my silver wasn't stolen, or, or, you know, actually, or it hadn't gone very far. Oh, you are blessed of the Lord, my son, a very spiritually minded boy. And I tell you what, out of gratitude to the Lord, I'm going to devote my silver to you so you can add another god to your shelf. Like to do it in honor of the Lord. You say, what impossible darkness has descended on this man and his family. A man bearing the name of the incomparable Jehovah. There he did it. Gratefully, he took his mother's silver that she was dedicating to the Lord Jehovah, so she said. And he used it to make another silver god in his little shrine. I suppose if you'd have asked him and he'd been learned enough, he'd have said, you can't go by all that Old Testament stuff, you have to demythologize it. And having made his gods, then he appointed his sons to be priests. He didn't find that in the Old Testament either. Gentlemen, before we throw stones at him, we better ponder what's going on under our own noses. This is the age of pluralism. The recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury went to India a year or two ago, and when he came back, he gave a lecture. He said he was overwhelmed by the spirituality of India. The thing for us Christians to do was not to keep claiming the uniqueness of Christianity. We want to enter genuine dialogue with other faiths, not claiming that we and we only have the truth, but together with all religions, working together to try and reach the truth, as each religion contributes its insight and help towards eventually coming to the truth. And he, an archbishop, appointed to be the chief guardian of the uniqueness of Christ and the incomparability of God in that little country of England. Oh, but it is becoming fashionable to denounce what is called evangelical imperialism. Some mornings in my northern home, I wake up soon enough to hear with befuddled brain, Thought for the Day, as it is called, upon BBC four. One morning, giving the thought for the day was the Bishop of Oxford. He reported that some of the students in the student union in Oxford had tried to ban the Christian Union from having its meetings on university union premises. They objected to these missions that these evangelical students had, trying to ram their religion down other people's throats. The students proposed to ban them. Well, no, said the Archbishop, that wouldn't really be democratic principle, that. I mean, we must allow people to say what they, what they believe. But for myself, I too deplore this evangelical imperialism. I wouldn't ever try to convert anybody, he informed the world as a nice thought for the day to begin with. And you'll say, oh, I, I have my faith, but what we want to do is to join with all faiths and seek the true by genuine. And we shall reach a day eventually, gentlemen, when the preaching of the gospel itself will appear to be the most bigoted, narrow-minded, antisocial, troublesome activity that many will consider ought now, in the interests of peace in a pluralistic society, to be curtailed, if not banned. For you see, Babylon is preparing to mount the big beast. And when the beast comes, man shall take to his lips those majestic words, who is like unto Jehovah? And in man's final blasphemy apply them to the man of sin himself, saying, who is like unto the beast? Final harvest of the seed that was sown in Eden's fair garden. Take this fruit, and you shall be as God. This story, lurid in its colors, should not be dismissed on that account as something exceptionally primitive. It brings us a warning painfully relevant to the advanced years of our century. And then there was another horror. Not content with his museum and god shelf, uh, maintained by his mum Silver, dedicated to the Lord, if you please. He got a Levite. You'll see. Who came to lodge in his city. And like I said, you know, young man, I, I have a proposition to put to you for you. You look to me a, a good young man. You're a Levite, aren't you? I don't suppose it's a to, um, to secure an occupation being a Levite, is it? I tell you what, I could make you an offer. I could give you a good living here. I could see you had a handsome suit and your food and clothes and a comfortable living, uh, and an honorable niche in society, uh, if you would consent to come and be a priest for me i- i- in my, uh, little museum of gods here. And you know what? The Levite heard the call. And And became became a priest to Father Micah, and he called the young chap one of his sons, did Father Micah. The Rabbi, the Masoretes, who copied out the text of Old Testament, became embarrassed by what they presently read, that the Levi concerned was a grandson of Moses. They couldn't believe it, they could hardly consent to what it said, so they wrote a big N on top of the word Moses that made it read that he was the grandson of Manasseh. But there's no hiding of the fact, is there? This is the writer's thesis. He warned you that in the third generation, men would arrive, would lost their grip completely on the great salvation that God had given their grandfathers. What a travesty it was of the real situation of a Levite. Hired out. Rent a Levite system. Have you difficulties in your church? We have an organization, and you could rent out a Levite. What was the ethos of the Levitical system? The call upon a Levite's devotion was this, that the Levites were taken in the place of the firstborn. The firstborn had been originally claimed because on the night that God's destroying angel executed the judgments of God in Egypt. Israel's firstborn would have perished along with the firstborn of the Egyptians, unless it had been for the blood of the Passover lamb. When God saw the blood, he himself stretched himself over the door that the destroying angel should not pass through. And the firstborn of Israel were saved because the Lamb died in their place. Said God, therefore you are not your own. I claim you. Without the redeeming blood, you would have not had a life to live. Call upon your service is the fact that you were bought with redeeming. Presently, God took the Levites instead of the firstborn. The claim on them stayed on the same basis. When these Levites gave themselves wholly to the work of the Lord, then it was incumbent upon the rest of Israel to maintain them, not to hire them, but to maintain them. You know what? I'm in a big club in England that, amongst other things, has for its objective the maintenance of all the Queen's cavalry, and she has some beautiful horses. It's called, the name of the club is called the Income Tax. The Queen doesn't hire horses from me. I have to maintain them. And if she pleases to send a horse in my direction to fetch me to Buckingham Palace, she doesn't hire it out. There are those still whom God calls to devote all their time to spiritual work. They are God's servants, bought with the blood of Christ. You don't hire them, gentlemen. You are on bounden duty to support them, for the Lord has ordained it that they that preach the gospel should live of the gospel. But woe be tight anybody who gets it into his head, be it individual or church, that he can hire a servant of God. So much spiritual service contracted for so much of a salary. Or at least, if you go on that system, you must be prepared for what happened next. The Danites, not being content with the territory that they held, left and went north, seeking wider field. They happened to come by the place where Micah's shrine was, and they noticed this Levite. They said, you know, we could offer you a better living than this. I mean, what is better for you, to be a a Levite to one individual or to be the chief priest in the whole tribe. We could make it worth your while coming with us. We need a Levite. And you know, the man heard a louder call than he'd heard the first time and agreed to go with the whole tribe of Dan. While they were having their breakfast and looking around, some of the Tufts, and they were Tufts who belonged to the Dan tribe, saw this array of gods, and unceremoniously they pinched them, collared them, took them off. And when Micah saw what was happening, he ran down the road out from hi, hi, hi, you've stolen my gods, he says. They said I wouldn't, they said I shouldn't shout like that, you know. It could disturb some of our young men, and some of our young men here are rather tough young men. I would you, I would go back home. Poor old Micah lost his gods. Somebody else stole them. Well, they'd stolen his Levite as well. Very unfortunate. You say, how could anybody possibly believe a yarn like that in the name of religion, stealing other people's gods? Well then, gentlemen, remember the medieval history of Christendom. How nations fought over relics. And what you did if you defeated the other side was not only to raid the exchequer, but you raid his, raided the churches to get the relics, because they were very powerful and potent things, so it was thought were relics. And when you got them, could be put to use in more than one way, to do miracles of all kinds that had this incidental benefit that could cause the cash to come rolling into the church's coffers. And anyway, he who had the biggest relic in such a superstitious world was thought to have the very favor of God upon him. Stealing relics was a very serious business in medieval Christendom. And you'll cry for very grief, wouldn't you? Is this what Paul's Christianity, the fair name of Jesus, has come to? See the final horror. The Danites went off, plus their gods, plus their Levi. They went right north to a city, Laish, that within this last ten years has been uncovered by the archaeologists, or at least the main gateway thereto has been uncovered. You can still go and see it if you wish. This was a Canaanite city living far from other parts of civilization, at peace and feeling safe, secure. The Danites fell upon them and massac- massacred them to a man. You say, but that wasn't that what Israel was meant to do? I- I- I thought they were meant to drive out the Canaanites. Well, perhaps so they were. But they weren't meant to do what Dan did next. Having driven out the Gentile idolaters and seized the city, he proceeded to set up his own tribal idolatrous shrine in Dan. Christendom hasn't a lot of room to talk, has it? When in many ages, Christendom so far forgot the commands and prohibitions of the law, that they went abroad with swords, and at the point of the sword conquered nations. And then, on pain of death, converted them. Hm. When the Gypsies came to England, they didn't know where they came from, of course. They said they'd come from Egypt, so we called them Gypsies. And Queen Elizabeth the First gave them six months to learn the language and to get converted. It's a common way of converting, that many of the English were converted that way. The king got converted, lined up all his citizens and baptized them on pain of death. And what a story South America could tell of conquistadores and the establishment of Christianity, when what was established was as idolatrous, very often, as the primitive idolatries that it supplanted. Judges, at its end, is turning out to be a very solemn book. Pray don't think it was the end of the world. Israel recovered from this, gloriously recovered in subsequent ages. Though, of course, in the end it went downhill. But Israel isn't finished yet. They shall be restored. And the final note will be a note of victory. But for the moment, it's a very sad low to which Israel has now descended. If this is the antic of one individual and one tribe, you are to be prepared for the fact that subsequently ten tribes became so idolatrous that God had to cart them off to Assyria. Subsequently, two tribes followed their steps, and God had them deported to Babylon. Let us take a break in our studies now.