Sowing and Reaping

Sponsors: 
Jon Cunningham, Owner, Cunningham Financial Group
Website:  www.cunninghamfinancialgroup.com   
Phone:  205-326-7364

Tyler Cain, Senior Loan Officer, Statewide Mortgage
Websites: https://statewidemortgage.com/
https://tylercain.floify.com/
Phone: 813-380-8487

Tucked deep within the book of judges is a sad little story about people who looked out for themselves over others. Micah starts it off by admitting he stole from his momma. And it just kind of goes downward from there. I ran across it this week and learned some things I wanted to share with you.

This event services the truth of Galatians 6:  "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, what a man sows this he will also reap." This is a life principle that is true for all of us, whether we believe it or not. Micah's story in Judges will help us see it. 

The takeaway from Judges 17 and 18 are these:
1) What Goes Around Comes Around
2) Enablers Are Often Part Of The Problem
3) Our Will In God's Name Won't Last
4) You Can't Win The Self Service Battle
5) God Is Still In The Right Place

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to season six of the Excel Still More Podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I am here to encourage you in your walk with the Lord, and I'm glad you've joined. Our program continues to be sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John is a good friend, and he's helped me and my family in everything from stock and mutual fund investing to annuities, life insurance, and retirement planning. I certainly commend him to you if you have needs in any of those areas. You can reach him at 205-326-7364. Thank you again for your ongoing encouragement and support. Let's get started. Hey, welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope that you're doing really great. So every once in a while, I like to devote an episode to a Bible story, which is usually a better known story that we try to extrapolate something from, like when we covered David and Goliath, or a year or so ago we did Paul's shipwreck, stuff like that. But today's entry will be a little bit different. It is an event from Israel's history that is not very well known. There's a chance that you may not even know this story. It's tucked in the middle of the book of Judges, and it concerns a couple of guys who have somewhat famous names, Micah and Jonathan, but neither of them are the ones you would think of. This is not the minor prophet Micah, and this is not the son of Saul. And while I'd read this story before, just in Old Testament read-throughs, going through it this morning I realized it's an event I'd completely forgotten, which made it a great read, like learning something new, and then all of these, I think interesting, I hope interesting applications started coming together, and I got a little bit excited about running up here to the building and recording it for you. As I mentioned already, it's tucked deep within the book of Judges, which was a period of 350 years or so where Israel did a lot of really despicable things. The theme of that whole period is that Israel did what was right in their own eyes, and they did not have a king over them, and they did not recognize properly God as king over them, and a lot of awful things happened. You might remember a few things from that letter, the book of Judges, perhaps some of the more famous of their leaders, like Deborah or Gideon, or certainly Samson. There was around fifteen judges who raised up periodically amongst the people because they were in this constant cycle, the S cycle, we call it, where they would sin all the way across the board, and so in God's anger the people would suffer at the hands of neighboring nations. They would then be humbled and turn to supplication to the Lord, pleading for help. God would raise up a savior for them in the form of a judge, and then they would have a time of peace. And while that peace may last up to 40 years, they would always fall back into the cycle again. So that's kind of the way the entire book of Judges goes. But here in chapters 17 and 18, we get something totally different. Micah nor Jonathan are judges. Micah's story kind of stands alone and probably would just be a footnote, except there's two entire chapters given to it. So after reading through it a couple of times today, I just jotted down a small handful of things that I needed to hear and needed to learn and want to share with you. Admittedly, these points are probably affected by a study that we did here at Lindale just a few weeks ago from Galatians 6, and this is where the title of today's episode originates, Sowing and Reaping. In Galatians chapter 6, the Bible says, Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. Not only will this be a major point in the story I'm about to share with you, it really is the dominating truth behind all the points. And so let me begin by getting you in that frame of mind. Do you remember that from Galatians chapter six? Why do you think the Apostle Paul had to write to Christians, do not be deceived? I think it's because we sometimes believe that the rules are different for us. Maybe I'm special, maybe I don't sew properly, maybe I'm not approaching this right, maybe I'm making all kinds of mistakes, but in my case, uniquely in my case, good things will come out of it no matter what. The Apostle Paul is saying, Do not be deceived. That's the way the world talks. That's the way Satan talked in the very beginning. Just eat this. I know you're not supposed to, but there will be good that comes out of it. In fact, he pushes it a little farther. He says, God is not mocked. It is an all-out mocking of the goodness of God, his holiness and righteousness, and the way that he designs things for you and me to say, I can start poor and expect a good finish. I can put my attention on the flesh now and live that way. And somehow, when the crop comes up, it'll be amazing. So it's more than just foolish thinking, it's anti-God thinking, and it mocks him. That phrase God is not mocked always makes me think of first John where it says, if you say you have no sin, you're just calling God a liar. And kind of tying those ideas together, if I'm approaching anything, relationships, family, education, job, future, if I'm approaching anything wrongly, and I'm either not willing to admit that from the inside out, or I just don't think it's going to matter, then God takes offense at that. In Galatians 6, he gets a bit more specific when he says, look, if you sow to the flesh, if you sow to the carnality of the flesh, things from Galatians chapter five, like if I'm going to approach this immorally or servicing my flesh, or with a divisive, slanderous spirit, or with replacing God, at least for now, with other things, he said, all you're going to reap is corruption. Any seed like that planted cannot produce a lasting crop. And because our story is in the book of Judges, that's basically what you're going to see today. Micah and his mom and pretty much everybody else in the story is out for themselves and the outcome is exactly what you would expect. Now, just to put a positive slant on it for you and me while we're going through that story, what if we decide to be different? The rest of that text in Galatians 6 says, if you sow to the Spirit, to the Holy Spirit, then you will reap from the Spirit eternal life. And of course, in that text, he's talking about what if I approach this with love and joy and peace? What if I start this whole thing with patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness? What if step one is self-control? Whatever it is, anything you're contemplating or working on. Well, life is tough and the elements can be brutal, and I don't know exactly what the crop will look like, but I know that in the eyes of the Lord, what is produced will last. It will certainly have eternal heavenly value and most likely a lot of short-term awesomeness as well. So that's the main idea I hope you get from the remainder of the episode. We're always sowing, putting seed in the ground, working the soil around us. As a general life principle, what comes out of it is always connected to what went in. And I want what comes out of every part of my life to be good and godly. So those ideas need to be the seeds that start those things right there in the beginning. Okay, so thanks for sticking around while I did a little preaching there. Now let me tell you this story. I will make my five observations quickly afterwards, but maybe you will come up with the same as we move along the way. This all begins in Judges chapter 17, verse 1, when there is a guy from the hill country of Ephraim named Micah. He says to his mother, The eleven hundred pieces of silver which were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse in my hearing, behold the silver is with me. I took it. And his mother said, Blessed be my son by the Lord. So that's how the story opens, with a guy who stole some money from his mom, and she falls apart over it, and he fesses up. So she returns that blessing to him, and then she has this great idea. She says, I wholly dedicate the silver from my hand to the Lord for my son to make a graven image and a molten image. Now therefore I will return them to you. So her idea to her thieving son is Since you brought all that back, let's build a bunch of false idols. And Micah jumped right on board with that, and he had a shrine built, he had an effid and household idols and consecrated one of his sons so that he might be able to set up a priest in his home. He's basically making an idol temple out of his home. Sometime after that, there's a young Levite, which is of the tribe of the actual priest by God's design. He comes through town and Micah calls him over. Micah basically offers this guy, whose name is later revealed to be Jonathan, a job. He says, Hey, I'll give you ten pieces of silver a year, I'll give you clothes, I'll give you all the things that you need. I just want you to be my house priest. And the guy agrees, and Micah consecrates him, and the young man becomes his priest, and Micah says to end chapter 17, now I know that the Lord will prosper me, seeing I have a Levite as priest. I mean, I read that and I think the fact that you have molten images and an ephid that has nothing to do with the commandments of Moses should have maybe said that you were on the wrong track, but he feels like he got this one thing right, so certainly God is entirely on board. Okay, sorry for that. I busted into application too early. There's still one more chapter, chapter 18. So this chapter starts by reminding us that there was no king in Israel at the time, and everybody did pretty much whatever they wanted. So the tribe of Dan was looking for an inheritance of their own, and at that time they didn't have it, so the sons of Dan went traveling around in that region looking for a place to live. Some of those scouts eventually come to Micah's house and they meet the priest, and the priest explains how he came to be there and sought God's approval on their behalf and so forth. Those five guys eventually scouted out a land that they wanted and some people that they would need to destroy to get it, and they head back home to rally up 600 troops to go out and take that land. But before they went to the Sideonites and destroyed those people and took over everything, they stopped back by Micah's house and they took his priest. I say took, I mean they took the molten image and the graven image and the effid and all the goods, and they kind of made an offer to the priest saying, Hey, how about you leave this guy and come work for us? So the guy agrees and they take off. And Micah chases them down and says, Hey, what are you guys doing? That was my stuff. What's the deal? And they basically turned around and says, You've got two choices. We're stealing this from you, whether you like it or not, so you can go back home and live, or you can bow up and we'll kill you and your entire household. So Micah goes home, never to be heard from again. The people of Dan go and destroy all of the people of a certain city, and they rename it Dan, and they set up the graven image, and Jonathan the priest oversees it. Which leads to the last verse of the story. So they set up for themselves Micah's graven image, which he had made all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh. And we'll get to that at the end of the episode in a minute. It's just interesting to note that all the while this mess is going on, God, the true God, has a house at Shiloh with a tabernacle and priests and everything, and nobody seemed to care. Interesting final footnote there, a couple of hundred years later, when Jeroboam takes Israel away from Jerusalem to set up idols in the north to prevent them from coming back. One of the two cities where he establishes them is Dan. Alright, so that brings us to the back end of the episode where we answer the question what is the moral of the story? I have a series of things to share that are personal to me in my life and particularly right now in the lives of people I care about, and I want to share them with you. Five things. Number one, what goes around comes around. This, of course, is just another way of saying that you reap what you sow, but I found it interesting that the whole story out of nowhere starts with Micah stealing from his mom. That's our introduction to this guy. What seems to be the heartless act of pillaging his mother's goods. And for a little while, it seems to be okay that he's that kind of guy. His mom chooses to forgive him and things move forward, and he feels like he puts himself in a really nice place. But how does the story end? With a group of 600 men stronger than him, who are in character, perhaps like him, stealing all of the things from him that that money bought. And I think the moral for me here in point one is whatever you're going to pursue, whatever your next move is, whatever you're building, however you're going to interact with someone, spend a little time in self-evaluation. Am I godly in this? Am I approaching this in the right way? If this entire thing starts out with me being dishonest or my sin, how do I expect that that won't come back around? It's like that familiar biblical phrase, you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. This helps me a lot with plans because I don't know how things are going to go. I don't know how other people are going to respond or what God is going to do or how life will work out. But I know if my story starts with me being a thief, there's a pretty good chance that things might get stolen from me in the end. And you might come back and say, well, there's a chance things may get stolen from you even if you start out with integrity. And that's certainly true, and that would be out of my control, but at least I could be confident it didn't work out that way because of what I brought into it. Here's a second thing, and I know I don't know everything about this situation, but I think it's worth saying that enablers are often a part of the problem. Maybe there's another way of reading the story, but she's falling apart because her money has been taken. He just comes in and says, I stole it, here you go, and she's like, Oh, blessings on you. That's great. You don't get any sense of correction or true repentance from the story, but whether that's built in somewhere or not, her next idea is a really terrible one. She wants to go ahead and give the money back to him, well, to the Lord in her estimation, but back to him to build out this entire false idol worship construct in God's name. Micah is responsible for his own behavior, but his mom was no help. And so it's made me think a little bit about my part in other people's sowing. I've got kids, I have close friends, I interact with them all the time, I see they're good and they're bad, and I watch them sowing seed for the future. I want to help them develop wisdom. I want them to see that penitent, humble, godly approaches to things that seek God's way is the only way to know that you're doing it right. And while there's room here to champion her mercy for just kind of forgiving him, in the end, it doesn't seem like she's raised a man who knows the way of God, and then she contributes to his downfall in the future by giving him a non-God-based idea. So just to speak to those who are dealing with others, trying to help them learn the lesson of sowing and reaping, please own that you may be a factor in how they sow and the way you speak truth and the way you address deficiencies and the ideas that you give to the project, they matter. So help them do better, but be careful about being an enabler of someone who is on the wrong path. Number three, our will in God's name won't last. Micah and his mom and Jonathan, they lived in a time where God was known and they wanted to do things in the name of God. Let's build these molten images in the name of God. Let's hire this priest and set things up, and now we know that God is pleased and that God will bless us. If it's okay for me to be straight with you, and we're in the 16th minute, so if you're still here, you can handle it. Just because you do it in the name of God and you believe that it pleases him doesn't mean that it is in God's name or that it does please him. And this gets really tricky because people genuinely believe that they are sowing to the spirit. I'm doing what God wants. I'm doing things God's way. Why isn't this working out to his glory or my good or any of those things? And when you dig in and you look at their choices, you're like, no, that's not what God said at all. We are unfortunately in our family dealing with someone very close to us who is making atrocious decisions, quote, in the name of God. God told me to do this. And I'm texting this guy going, that's exactly the opposite of what Jesus said. But for him, it's become very subjective and internal, and he and God are good. So all of his decisions are pleasing to God. And I think the story kind of shows where the devil works in the details because things look like they were going pretty well. They set up the whole temple, and then this priest just comes through. That's gotta be God's will, just setting up a priest for us, and everything's looking great, so we know that God is with us. But remember Galatians 6, when you sow to the flesh, you reap corruption. That corruption may take a while. It may not look like corruption for a while, but when we sow to the spirit and we do the things that we know please God and we do them his way, then even if it's difficult in the short term, which is really kind of the New Testament Christian concept and ideology, the payoff is eternal, sustained, and indestructible. Micah learned that lesson when he watched everything he had built just walk away or get carried away, and any hope he had to defend it would have just cost him his life. God wasn't there when he needed him the most because God wasn't there in the sewing that Micah had been doing all along. Number four, you cannot win the self-service war. If whatever you're doing or whatever you're doing it is for you, if you're super focused on yourself and you're out for number one, you live in a world where other people will do that too, and they may be stronger than you, and there may be more of them, and that's a war you will end up losing every time. I mean, that's kind of what happened here. He's thinking about himself, he stole from his mom. Then he comes back and admits it, but he builds out this whole false idol concept, and at the end of chapter 17, he uses that self-language that God will bless me now. But then came along the Danites and 600 soldiers who were also out for themselves, and they were stronger than him, so everything he took for himself, they took from him for themselves. The whole picture of judges is everyone did what was right in their own eyes. That's mentioned here in chapter 17 and also in chapter 21. And in that self-service, time and time again, everybody suffered. We have got to break that cycle. If you and everyone you know is out doing what they want and what services their needs, people are going to get hurt. And the very ones who are sowing for themselves will have every part of their crop taken by someone else. Sure, as I said earlier, things may be taken from you by selfish people anyway. But that will be all the more devastating if all I've cared about all along is me and what I get. Adding to that the fact that I do not have God working with me if I've been working purely for myself. Interesting a little addition on this self-service. If Jonathan is the name of this priest, he stayed because it looked good for him and then he got a better deal and off he went because he was just like everybody else in the story. And then lastly, and I mentioned this a little while ago, number five, God is still in the right place. So many terrible things happened in the book of Judges. The sin suffering cycle continued over and over again. They probably wondered where God was when all this stuff was happening, but the text says all the time the house of God was at Shiloh. God was right where he said he was going to be. He was accessible in all the ways that he said that he would be, and all of his promises were sure, but not for people out sowing those wild oats however and wherever they wanted. You understand this, right? That Christ is King and He is exactly where He said that He would be. In glory, among His people, drawing and calling and blessing and using and helping us. And maybe you know that, and maybe it's time to return. And maybe a story like this can help you break the cycle. Number one, what goes around comes around. So keep that in mind on the front end. Number two, enablers are part of the problem. Find yourself people who will be honest with you and who will give you good godly ideas. Number three, our will in God's name won't last. You can't just tag his name on what you're doing. It has to be in pursuit of him and for his glory. Number four, you can't win the self-service war. No one ever will. God made you for his glory and he will bless you when he comes first. And as we said, God is still in the right place, waiting like the prodigal's father, for you to come to him. The limitless love is his, but the choice is always yours. And the results aren't random or unpredictable or unfair. It just comes down to this true and timeless principle of sowing and reaping. Thank you for joining us today. If you found value in this episode, consider sharing it with a friend. And speaking of friends, if you have any mortgage-related needs, whether you're a first-time homebuyer, exploring refinancing options, or dreaming of future home ownership goals, reach out to Tyler Kane. He's a senior loan officer at Statewide Mortgage. This company is founded by a fellow believer in Louisville, Kentucky, and is dedicated to helping families achieve their dreams of home ownership. Tyler offers 20 years of expertise and dedication to guide you through every step of the process. You can find Tyler's website link in our show notes or contact him directly at 813 380 8487. And always remember whatever you do in the name of Jesus Christ, excel still more.