Jubilee Life Coach: Daily Meditations

Judges 18:21-31

• Jubilee Christian Life Coach • Season 1

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Summary
요약

Today’s passage tells how Micah and his neighbors chased after the tribe of Dan. Micah realized that the Danites were stronger than he was, and he turned back. Then the Danites came to Laish, where the people lived in peace. They struck them with the edge of the sword, burned the city with fire, and took the land. They changed its name and called it Dan. They set up the carved image Micah had made. And Jonathan, a descendant of Moses, and his descendants after him served as priests for the tribe of Dan, generation after generation.

The young Levite is Jonathan, the son of Gershom and the grandson of Moses. What is interesting is that the name Jonathan never appears in the family line of Moses anywhere else in Scripture, including Chronicles. Bible scholars think it was probably left out of the later records. It was hard to accept that a descendant who led the way into idolatry came from Moses’ own family. The Hebrew text adds a small letter nun (נ) above the line in the name of Moses, so that it reads “Manasseh.” This, too, seems to be because the scribes found it hard to admit that a descendant of Moses had become a priest of idols.


Meditation Points
묵상 포인트

Nothing made by human hands can ever be a god. Yet Micah says, “You take my gods that I made and the priest, and go away, and what have I left?” Micah made an idol and kept it in his own house. In the end, both his house and his god were plundered. Micah, who once stole, is now robbed by a bigger thief. This shows how foolish idolatry is. So how wise are we? Where does our certainty come from that our God is not an idol we make and control?

And he said, “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 is the matter with you?’”
Judges 18:24

What the tribe of Dan did is heartbreaking. They took the idol, the priest, and the land, and they set up the carved image “for themselves.” From beginning to end they stayed in a place of worship that human beings designed and built. They did not worship the true God. Is the “church” holding up its tradition and history while it looks like a social club, and still talking about the work of God? There is no work of God without steadfast love, justice, and righteousness. It is all too common to see the “descendants of Moses,” those who carry a godly heritage, leading the way into idolatry. In this age, what we need today is not a festival. It is repentance.

And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.
Judges 18:30

The days of the tribe of Dan were one round after another of false worship and idolatry. And their end was captivity and ruin. A faith that runs on false ways, and a religion that human beings direct, may seem to prosper for a while. But its end is destruction. The godliness that God our Father desires and accepts is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep ourselves from being stained by the world (James 1:27). How much are we living as light and salt (Matthew 5:13-14), bearing witness to the kingdom of Jesus Christ in this world today?


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