Misguided Worship

Intro

About 2000 years ago the Jewish people where converging on Jerusalem. This was the time of the Passover celebration, it was the time when God saved the firstborn of those who painted blood on their doorposts. It was a plague to show the world that Yahweh is God. The celebrated the Lord delivering them every year after that. I mean sometimes they would likely forget, like throughout the book of Judges when they where all doing what they wanted to do.

Throughout all of the feasts and celebrations the thought of the coming messiah was always there, would he show up finally. I believe it was for this reason that hundreds of thousands pf people gathered in Jeruselam for the feast of the passover. The atmosphere was electrifying and expectant, as Passover reminded the Jews of God’s power to rescue them from oppression. Many longed for a new Messianic deliverance from Roman rule.

You see, Jerusalem was under Roman control, and the people resented their foreign rulers. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate was in town, ensuring that no uprisings broke out during Passover. Many Jews believed the Messiah would come as a warrior king to overthrow the Romans and restore Israel’s independence.

When Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on the Donkey, they started to worship him as the messiah, but they missed the symbolism and the point. Some knew, some missed the point, some where just likely following the mob. But Jesus came being worshiped as the king. But really he came to be sacrificed as the passover lamb during the Passover celebration

it seemed to be a cse of misguided worship. They missed the signs, they were worshiping their own version of the messiah and when he didn't measure up they turned against him and had him killed, or at least tried to. Jesus entered as the true King, but not the one people expected. Instead of conquering Rome, He came to conquer sin and death through the cross.

What we are going to see today is that we can sometimes be misguided and though we claim to follow an worship God we miss the point and God’s true purpose. How we sometimes follow our won will and desires which leads to our downfall. We need to make sure that Our worship is not misguided but focused on the one true God.

Man Made Worship

I have don't it again, I am not going to the gospels during Palm Sunday. But I was doing some thinking and what was going on in Judges 17-18 ironically matches what happened during the week of the Passover celebration and Jesus triumphal entry and death. There are correlations between the two and that is what we are going to look into today.

These two chapters are interesting in the book of Judges They are not chronological to the rest of the chapters, there is no reference to judges or times of oppression. The key in these two chapters, along with most of Judges is that “In those days Israel had no king.” We are not sure when this happened, but God meant for it to be put here.

So we are going to go into these two chapters and look how it is repeated in Palm Sunday and our lives today.

Chapter 17

We start out with Micah and His mom.

Micah - Who is like God?

The name Micah means “who is like God?” Which in this case is also kind of Ironic.

So we meet Micah who stole 1100 pieces of silver from His mom. That amount of money was a fortune. Later on we read of a wage being paid to a priest at 10 pieces of silver a year. so 1100 pieces would have been a lot of money.

Micah stole the silver, heard his mother had placed a curse on it the he brought it back and admitted to what he had done.

The idol

Judges 17:3 ESV

3 And he restored the 1,100 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.”

She proceeded to consecrate it for the Lord for the benefit of her son to make a silver idol.

Her intention was to consecrate the silver and give the silver up for the glory of the Lord. What she thought she was doing was worshiping the Lord, or at least claimed to be worshipping the Lord. But the way in which she chose to worship the Lord was wrong.

the silver was returned to her and she gave 5 pounds of it to a silversmith to make into an idol with which to worship God. The idol went into Micah’s stash of shrines. I have seen stuff like this before, in India, God not being the problem, just him being the only God being the problem.

Then comes one of the main ideas that we see here. Judges 17:6

Judges 17:6 ESV

6 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

There was no king, everyone did what they wanted. You see the thing was God was supposed to be their king, they were to look to him for everything. It shows us this later on in the book of 1 Samuel.

1 Samuel 8:7 ESV

7 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

The Levite

And it gets worse.

The law of God specified that priests where to come from the tribe of Levi. A levite from the tribe of Bethlehem. He was looking for a plce and ended up at Micah’s house and got hired as the priest for his house and all his god’s

He claimed the Lord would be good to him because he had an actual Levite as a priest.

Judges 17:13 ESV

13 Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.”

People thought they were Good, following what they saw as right. Micah had an Idol consecrated to God, hired a Levite as a priest and thought he was following God the way that he should but that does not mean God blessed it. What does our worship look like and how is it following how God wants us to worship.

Success in ministry does not always mean we are following the will of the Lord. After all, by all the metrics the world and sometimes the church uses it looked as if they were being blessed by God. but rather what we see is Evil done in the name of Yahweh.

when we do not know or seek the word of God, or when we even ignore the word of God the results can be human manufactured or culturally conditioned worship. We tend to substitute things in the place of the glory of God. Misguided worship.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd welcomes Jesus as a political king rather than the suffering Messiah He came to be. Many expected Him to overthrow Rome rather than bring spiritual salvation.

Similarity: Both passages show how people can be claim to be following God but miss the true purpose of God’s plan and His will. They can miss the whole point.

Chapter 18

Judges 18:1 ESV

1 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.

Repeated theme - in those days there was no king. God was supposed to be their king. Israel was in a chaotic state.

the story continues with the Danites, the tribe of Dan, who were looking for a place to settle. Their tribe had no success in driving out the inhabitants of the land they inherited. They sent five men to spy the land, and they came to the hill country of Ephraim, where they found the Levite priest of Micah. The five Danites requested the priest to inquire of God so they may know whether they will succeed in their search for a homeland. So the priest told them, Judges 18:6

Judges 18:6 ESV

6 And the priest said to them, “Go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the Lord.”

The same priest who was being hired to help a guy worship all his idols, because he claimed the Lord would bless them did not make it so.

They travel 100 miles north out of their inherited land to spy out new territory.

There was no defense and good land the spies fund out.

They came back with 600 men and hired Micah’s levite to go with them.

Micah and his men found out and confronted the thieves.

They backed down in fear of dying.

Danites were succesful and burned and rebuilt a city for themselves.

On Palm Sunday, the same crowd that shouted “Hosanna!” later cried “Crucify Him!” (Matthew 27:22-23). They followed their own desires rather than recognizing Jesus as the true King.

➡ Similarity: Both events highlight how people tend to follow their own desires rather than God’s will, which leads to spiritual downfall.

Many people worshiped Jesus on Palm Sunday, but it what they thought the messiah should be according to their own eyes rather then what God was really trying to do.

So What?

Today we remember the day Jesus rode in on the donkey honoring his role as messiah and King, but people missed the point and what we saw was misguided worship. misguided because they missed the point. seeking to worship the messiah based on their own beliefs and expectations rather then what Jesus was coming in as.

The first thing we need to remember is that He came first to seek and to save the lost. This is what they missed. The people at the times in Judges missed the point as well. When God’s word is ignored or not really even know what happens is the Human manufactured culturally conditioned innovations that people call worship.

Misguided Worship and Misunderstanding God's Will

In Judges 17-18, Micah and the Danites engage in false worship, setting up idols and appointing unauthorized priests, thinking they are pleasing God. However, their actions reflect self-made religion rather than true obedience.They where motivated by their own concerns.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd welcomes Jesus as a political king rather than the suffering Messiah He came to be. Many expected Him to overthrow Rome rather than bring spiritual salvation.

Both passages show how people can be religious but miss the true purpose of God’s plan. Are we today worshipping the God of the Bible or some man made contrived myth?

Do evangelicals today worship the God of the Bible? Many do not, as seen in a recent survey of American evangelicals.[ref]Ligonier Ministries, “The State of Theology,” September 2016, http://thestateoftheology.com/.[/ref] An astonishing 71 percent believe that “Jesus is a created being.” According to 56 percent, The Holy Spirit is a “divine force but not a personal being.” Other false doctrines believed are: (1) “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam” (48 percent); (2) “Heaven is a place where all people will ultimately be reunited with their loved ones” (64 percent); and “God will always reward true faith with material blessings” (37 percent). Like Micah, evangelicals today have made their own image of God in their “factory of idols.”

The same survey found that more than 70 percent of evangelicals do not attend church regularly. Like Micah, they say they can worship in their own homes, and that churches are filled with hypocrites. They question why they have to be members of any church, since they are members of Christ’s church. They have lost sight of Biblical teachings that all believers ought to be in communion with the saints wherever they are (Rom 12:4-8), and that they ought to be under the spiritual oversight of the elders of the church (Heb 13:7). How can they obey these commands if they are worshiping alone or with their family in their homes?

On Palm Sunday, the same crowd that shouted “Hosanna!” later cried “Crucify Him!” (Matthew 27:22-23). They followed their own desires rather than recognizing Jesus as the true King.

Both events highlight how people tend to follow their own desires rather than God’s will, which leads to spiritual downfall.

Success in God’s eyes

The Danites steal Micah’s priest and idols, assuming that a corrupt priesthood and stolen gods will bring them success.

On Palm Sunday, many of the religious leaders rejected Jesus and trusted in their own authority rather than recognizing the true High Priest and King.

Both accounts show how misplaced trust in human leadership and self-made religion leads to failure and judgment.

But that begs the question what does success in ministry look like? if ltrust in human leadership and human ways leads to downfall then what does it look like when we are doing what we are supposed to?

Their thinking is that if there are great numbers andbig ministries, God must be blessing their church. Every little church today wants to become a megachurch. But great numbers, budgets and ministries do not always signify that these churches are pleasing or acceptable to God. Like Micah, the priest and the Danites, using the name of God and Christian-speak do not always translate to godliness and holiness. In fact, the Bible clearly teaches that faithful churches will always be a small remnant because of the love of the world and also because of persecution. Think of Jesus himself: after three years of his earthly ministry, what did he have to show? 120 true disciples.

Instead of this then what we are to follow is obedience to the word of God. As we can see, success does not mean big money and big numbers but rather obedience to the word of God. Making sure we are not following man made rules but the word of the Lord. This is a warning for us. Not to seek big numbers and big ministries, not that they are in themselves bad things but make sure that we are rather being faithful to God and His word.

Let us worship God through the learning of His word and being faithful to what it says.