There Was No King

Good morning, everybody. Great to see you guys today. Thank you all. Thank you, Rick. I appreciate that, man. Maybe you and I just keep hanging out. Rick, let’s we let’s hang out in front of everybody. Thank you, Miss Diane. I appreciate that. Awesome.

Good morning, everybody. Great to see everybody here today. We are coming to the time of our service where we just practice a little congregational prayer. You know, Jesus, when He was ministering on earth for those short but pivotal three years, multiple times He went into the temple, the local house of worship, and Jesus said something that’s extremely striking. He said, “My, my house shall be called a house of prayer.” So, something that we prioritize here at Sauldam, because we don’t just want to be a church that prays. Every church prays. We want to be a praying church. We want to be a church that’s founded on, driven by, marked by, known for prayer. So, that’s why we do this every Sunday morning.

This morning, we’re going to do something a little different. Normally, I just have you stay where you are or grab a neighbor, but this week is Enfuge. It is our mission trip, worship summer camp for middle and high schoolers. So, I’m going to do something a little different because it is a mission trip. Now, they are going to hear sermons. We’re going to worship. We’re going to hang out. Fun activities. But also during the day, we’re going to go out and do activities for people to try to take the hope of the gospel to people. So, instead of us just praying at our seats, do something a little uncomfortable for us. I actually want to invite all the middle and high schoolers, if we don’t have them all here today, but the middle and high schoolers, if you’re coming to Enfuge, can you please come up to the front with us, please? Yeah. Thank you. It always takes a couple. All right. This just a representation of who we have coming with us this year. Becca, you go ahead and join us up here, too.

You may have noticed in your bulletin whenever you came in, there’s one of these little wristbands. If you don’t have a bulletin, you just raise your hand, and you might not have a bulletin. All right, Buck and Philip will grab them from the back. Becca can grab them from the front. So, what we’ve done is we’ve put all the names of the students and the chaperones that are going to Enfuge on these little wristbands. I am asking you to make a one-week commitment to put this on and don’t take it off. Now, the names in the bulletins are random, but you got the first name of all the students and the chaperones going to camp. And what this is for is to remind you to pray for your person all throughout the week.

So, I want to go ahead and begin that focused, intentional prayer this morning. Hey guys, can y’all do something for me? Can y’all spread out up front here? Let’s get some space between you and your best friend. I get that. I want to invite the congregation because we we need to commission these students for camp. Would you come and join me up front and just come and be close to one of these students, and we’re going to pray for them up front. I need I need I need some people to volunteer. You go ahead and start making your way up front. You can pick your favorite. You can pick your least favorite. Just don’t tell anybody who that might be. And we’re just going to take a moment. We’re all going to pray at the same time. We’re all going to pray out loud like we normally do, and you’re just going to pray that God would get a hold of this student or this chaperone and give them a great weekend camp.

All right, we got some Pentecostals this morning. There’s already some praying going on that I can’t distinguish, apparently. Awesome. We’ll just take a few moments and we’re just going to pray. Ask the Lord to bless this week. So, what you’re doing, you don’t you don’t have to face the front. You can just kind of be facing your student. All right, so y’all take it away. Just just pray by name for the student or the chaperone you’re surrounding. Ask that God would give them a great week at camp and yeah, use camp to do something. All right, let’s all take it away, and then whenever it gets quiet and awkward, I’ll put a bow on it, and I’ll Pray for us. Okay. All right, go for it. God, thank you for the students that You are sending to Infuge. Thank You, Father, for calling Becca to be our student director. Lord, calling out to the ministry so many years ago and bringing he and Miss Beth here to Sauldam. God, thank You that I get to just have a front row seat to Your work here. God, You are giving us the opportunity not just to go have fun, not even just to sing songs to You and hear really good preaching. God, You’re also giving us the opportunity to go be a salt and salt and light, go be a gospel presence in the upstate this week. And I pray that we would take the opportunity seriously. Lord, for these students, some of them have never shared their faith before. And I pray this week You would give them the courage and the boldness to do that. God, for some of these students, they don’t yet have a daily relationship with You where they’re praying with You and reading Your Word. And I pray this week You would You would draw them to that. And Lord, I have to imagine because I I too was a middle schooler that went on mission trips, though I didn’t meet You until I was in high school. I did I wasn’t saved until later after that. I imagine, Lord, there may be a student that goes with us to camp that doesn’t yet know You as Lord and Savior. They may know about You by God’s grace. Their parents have them here at church, but they don’t actually know You yet. I’m just praying. I’m praying, Lord, that that student, whoever that student may be, that You would save them this week. That they would come back transformed again. Not just from a week of fun, not just from a week of churchy stuff, but because of a an interaction with the living God, the holy ruler of the universe. God, obviously, we we beg that You would take care of all the traveling details, Lord. Already some hiccups with that with rental vehicles this morning and by Your grace we’re navigating that. Lord, I just I pray You’d get us up to Southern Wesleyan safely and quickly. You bring us back home and Lord that next Sunday when we get to share a little bit about camp, God, we would just so clearly be able to point to You and how great You are. Lord, thank You. We love You. It’s in Your great name we pray. Amen.

Awesome. Thank you guys so much. Y’all are great. You can give your help yourselves a round of applause if you need to do that. It’s fine. Need if your wife needs anything or holler.

Thank You. I appreciate that.

Thank you all for humoring me. I look forward to doing more of that in the future as God continues to call us to take the gospel not just around our state, perhaps one day even around the world that we would get to surround somebody up here and pray a prayer of commissioning over them. If you have your Bibles, you go ahead and open up to Judges chapter 17. Judges 17. We are we have turned to the final corner in the book of Judges. If you’re still learning how to navigate, by the way, your copy of the Bible, Judges would be the seventh book in the Old Testament. You start off with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, which is where most of our Bible reading plans bog down. And then you’re going to hit Numbers and the Deuteronomy, Joshua, and then Judges. This morning we are looking at Judges chapter 17 and chapter 18. I said we we’ve we’ve rounded the final corner. You see Judges splits into three parts. The first part is just the peril that Israel is facing because all these foreign nations are attacking them and they don’t have a leader to help gather them to help lead them. That’s chapters one and two. And then God starts raising up all these military leaders whom we call judges. That’s chapters 3-6. 12 men and women whom God calls and appoints. So that the people of Israel could have a leader against these foreign armies, be it the Amorites or the Philistines. In chapter 17, though, we we begin this final section where there’s no more judges, but there certainly are still these foreign armies. And the ultimate issues that the people of Israel are facing still persist. Namely their utter inability to walk with the Lord. What we’re going to see four times over the next four chapters is this repeated phrase, There was no king in Israel. It’s almost as if the person who is writing this story of Judges, who’s capturing this history, is reflecting on the fact that there’s all these people, there’s all these enemies, but there’s no central leader. There’s nobody to bind them, nobody to gather them, nobody to drive or direct them forward. And because of this or related to that, the problem of sin keeps manifesting and keeps growing bigger and bigger.

But here’s the deal. What we know just from our lived experience, but also from reading the Bible, is that a king over Israel would not deliver them from the sin inside of Israel. Because Saul, David, Solomon, and his sons, though kings, cannot deliver Israel from their deepest issue, the sin that lives inside of their soul. When the author of Judges is reflecting on the fact that there is no king in Israel, the people are doing what’s right in their own eyes. What he’s really saying is that people are bent towards sin. We don’t need a king to lead us towards sin. We don’t need a judge to take us down the bad path. We do that just fine on our own.

Sin is like a corrupting influence that takes hold and has its way with us. We see this every day. We see what this corrupting influence is kind of like. Have you ever been in the place where you want to get a bowl of cereal? You’ve got the bowl out. You grab the spoon. It’s on the counter. You’re getting real excited about whatever it is for you. Might be Raisin Bran or Honey Bunches of Oats or whatever it is. You pour all the dry cereal into the bowl and you’re starting to salivate. You’re like, “Oh man, this is going to be so good.” You get the milk out. You flip the top off of it. No big deal. And you start to pour that and it kind of glug lugs out of the thing. You make your way to the living room and you turn on the sports or whatever it is. And you settle in nice for this afternoon or evening bowl of cereal while you’re watching whatever it is. And you take that first bite and you spit that stuff out. Not because the cereal is bad, but because the milk had spoiled. Right? Anybody ever been there? Okay. Sin is like this corrupting influence which takes good things and kills and destroys it.

Any other like young parents in the room or just people, and you see a little bit of sickness start off in your home, a sniffly nose here, grows into an occasional cough here which lands a husband in bed with a fever. Anybody else been there this week perhaps? Yes. Or anybody else had this experience where you’ve got this friend. You and this friend, y’all might go back a couple years or way back 15, 30 years, but you had this disagreement, this argument, this issue pop up and your relationship is never quite the same with them. And what started so sweet and so fun and so life-giving has, man, just broken down and devolved and just kind of died. Sin does that. Sin is this corrupting influence which starts small just like a little bit of yeast but it gets worked into the whole dough. So eventually all of the bread of your life gets affected by it.

The people of Israel are experiencing that. They are experiencing this utter corrupting influence of sin. They don’t need a king to lead them into sin. They can do just fine on their own. This morning, we’re going to see unfortunately this corrupting influence at work. There’s one major takeaway I want you to grab from the sermon this morning. If you’re a notetaker, I want you to write this down. It’s this: We need God to lead. We need God to lead.

The people of Israel, they had judges, didn’t take care of the ultimate issue. They’re going to get kings. Won’t take care of the ultimate issue. You fast forward to when the Levitical priesthood is established with the temple in Jerusalem. They’ve got pastors. They’ve got priests and prophets. Doesn’t take care of the issue. What the people of Israel and what we need is for God to lead. You see, where God leads, where God’s leadership is cherished, where His word is obeyed, where His presence is sought, where His glory is magnified, that is where thriving and life and flourishing happen. When God leads, you might go through hard times, but at the opposite side of it is always life and joy and peace, even in the midst of it. But anytime anything else leads you, it always devolves into sadness and death, like a half gallon of milk that’s gone spoiled in your fridge. Before I even really get into the text, I want to ask you a question. If you could be real with yourself, who or what leads you? Who or what leads you might just be your intuition, your own wisdom, your own understanding. Could be your family, opinions of your mother or father or your kids. Could be your friends, always doing whatever your friends want you to do. It could be your boss. Yeah, they’ve got some authority over you just like a parent has authority over you. But maybe you’ve given that boss a little too much authority. Your 401k might lead you, your financial status, and you’re just doing anything it takes to serve that financial status. It could be doctors leading you, and you hang on every single word of a possible diagnosis or treatment. Man, if we’re being real with each other, there might be some sort of sin struggle that leads you, and every night you fall into the same dark hole that you can’t avoid. Man, you might be led by a destructive relationship with somebody, and you can’t get out of it, and you know it’s not going anywhere positive, but you can’t seem to break free. It might be anxiety. It might be any number of things. Who or what leads you?

You see, when God created us, He made us to live in a relationship of perfect harmony and obedience and submission to Himself. God made you for Him. God made you so that you would walk with Him. You would submit to Him. You would obey Him. You would cherish Him. You would love Him. And in the beginning, everything was good. We lived and we walked with God for some time. And man, the milk never spoiled. The relationships never broke down. The toes never got stubbed. The cancer never came. The financial status never broke. That was God’s original design for us: that we would follow Him, that we would obey Him, that we would cherish Him, and in the wake of God’s leadership, we would have the calm waters of joy and life and flourishing.

But unfortunately, our original parents, Adam and Eve, they traded that peace and harmony for the chaos that we live in today. Whenever they broke God’s original rule to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in that moment, Adam and Eve said, “We don’t need God to lead. We can lead ourselves.” And they went against His word. And ever since then, you and me and Billy Graham and your grandmother have been struggling to obey the Lord, struggling to follow God’s leadership, struggling to submit ourselves to the holy, wise, good God that made us and loves us. And God knew we couldn’t get ourselves out of this mess, try as we might. No amount of religion, no amount of money given to the Martin Hall renovation, no amount of Lord’s Supper being taken could ever get us out of this situation. So God said, “I’m not just going to take their issue seriously. I’m going to take it personally.” So God sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, not just to be a moral example for us, to show us how to treat people, but to do for us what we can never do: to fulfill all righteousness, to perfectly obey the holy demands of an infinitely holy God. Demands that, you know, you’ve got to pay for. Jesus came to satisfy.

Jesus never once lied. He never once coveted. He never once had greed. He never once ate too much. He never once ate too little. Jesus always obeyed the Heavenly Father so that you and me could be made right with God. You see, before God, or before Jesus came into the picture, our relationship with God is like spoiled milk: rotten, gross, not good for a whole lot. Jesus came, and it’s like He took that milk of our souls and the pure milk of Himself, and He switched them. But He didn’t just give us a new start. Jesus, He gave us milk that would never spoil. He gave us life that never devolves. He gave us a way of knowing God so that God, when He sees you, no matter what you’ve done, God still looks at you and says, “You’re perfect because of Jesus.” Praise God.

We live in 2026. And as we study this book of Judges, we look backwards through the cross, and we have all The benefit of the Son of God dying for us, because we’re going to look at the lives of a group of people who did not have that benefit. Chapter 17 and 18 of the book of Judges, Israel is facing a future without God’s leadership. Three arenas of their life will be corrupted by sin: the home, the faith, and the nation. We’re going to look at that.

The first section, verses one through five. Without God, sin corrupts the home. Without God, sin corrupts the home. You already heard it read once. I’m going to read it again. There was a man from the hill country of Ephraim named Micah. He said to his mom, “The 1100 pieces of silver taken from you and that I heard you place a curse on.” Hey, here it is. Here’s the silver. I took it. Then his mom said, “My son, may you be blessed by the Lord.” Not my reaction if I know that my kids have taken my money. He returns the 1100 pieces of silver to his mom. And his mom says, “I personally consecrate the silver to the Lord for my son’s benefit to make a carved image and a silver idol. I will give it back to you.” So he returned the silver to his mother. She took five pounds of silver and gave it to a silversmith. That silversmith made it into a carved image and a silver idol, and it was in Micah’s house.

Verse 5. This man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household idols, and he installed one of his own sons to be his priest. On the surface, there’s a way you can look at this and the situation seem almost positive. You have a son who’s returning some silver back to somebody he stole it from. Okay, that’s commendable. You’ve got a mom that takes this found silver and she dedicates it to God. Okay. And then the son, his name, it means Micah or it’s Micah. That means who is like God. The guy’s name literally is like this declaration that there is no one like God. There’s all these other false gods. There’s other great things in the world, but nothing is like God. On the surface, this can look positive. But I think we’ve all got our Bible reading glasses on this morning, and we see what’s going on. We see a son who is stealing money from his mom. And then we see that same mom dedicating that silver supposedly to God, but actually using it to make these false gods, these little idols. Man, what’s going on in this home?

Notice two more details. One, where’s dad? Dad’s not mentioned. And two, the mom’s name isn’t mentioned either. Scholars say that the fact that the mom’s name isn’t mentioned makes it seem like this could be any home in Israel. And if this could be any home, it’s probably the state of most homes. Most homes in Israel are corrupted by sin. Most homes in Israel are dealing with the spoiled milk of not loving God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Man, if you came in this morning and you’ve experienced a sin-corrupted home, I just want to say I’m sorry, man. Some of us came in this morning fighting. It’s like fighting with our spouses or our kids, our parents, and we’re like, man, I wish that we would stop doing this. Some of us have come from homes of utter financial ruin, and a couple bad decisions landed you in a place of some extreme difficulty. Others of us come from homes where our parents are divorced, and that’s hard. Others of us have come from homes or our homes themselves may be riddled by substance abuse, and we feel firsthand what it’s like to live in a home that’s been corrupted by sin.

But here’s the deal. That does not have to be the end of your story. You see, without God, sin corrupts the home. But with God, families can thrive. You see, no matter where your home is, your home can follow God. It just starts with you wanting it. For the family that is dealing with divorce, okay, let’s make the most of it. For the family that is dealing with financial ruin, okay, let’s follow God through that. No, man. No matter how sin is dealing or disrupting your home, with God, your family can thrive.

I want to say a special word to the dads in the room. Dads, grandfathers, uncles, men. I see some older brothers. Man, it’s a shame that the mother is the one that carries the child for nine months.

In pregnancy and does all it seems like all the work with taking care of a baby. But at the end of the day, the the man’s presence or lack thereof in the home ultimately is what determines the state of a kid’s life. For the men in the room, you may not have young kids in your house anymore like I do. For the grandfathers, like I said, the older brothers, the uncles, the surrogate dads, man, you got a huge role. You got a huge role to set the spiritual temperature of your home. You have a huge opportunity to make sure or at least to contend for the spiritual well-being of the other people around you. And that’s man that’s not just nuclear families. Some of y’all might be listening to this say I don’t have a spouse. I don’t have kids. Man, the state of your home still depends on you though. Is your home centered on the Lord? Man, just a by way of application, I just want to just say, man, please with all that you can, center your home on God and begin this week. Center your home on God. And we here at Salt provide lots of opportunities for that. Whether that would be supper clubs, Sunday morning Sunday school coming up in the fall with men’s and women’s disciplehip coming back up or for our kids and our students ministries, we have so many ways for you to center your home on the Lord. Please take one of those.

Every Friday morning, I get to work out with one of the other young dads of the church. I guess he saw me preaching and he said, “Jeremy, you look a little small. Let me show you a thing or two.” So, we get to work out. That’s fine. You know, whatever. And so, what what I bring to the relationship is we work out and then whenever we’re done, we’re stretching. I put my pastor hat on or my friend hat on for a few moments. I’m like, “Hey man, how you doing? How you growing in the Lord? What’s this like for you?” And man, he said the coolest thing. He said, “As I give more of my time to God and to the church, I’m seeing more of the benefits in my home life.” And man, it it struck me in that moment like it shouldn’t be profound, but it was for me for a few seconds of like, man, as we lean into the Lord, as we lean into church, as you lean into reading your Bible, as you lean into praying, the amount of flourishing and joy that comes from that. I just want to offer that to all of y’all. Maybe not working out with me on Friday mornings, but all of us can lean more into salt and we can lean more into our spiritual lives. Just do that.

Without God, sin corrupts the home. But with God, families can thrive. In this passage, sin doesn’t just corrupt the home, but write this down. Without God, sin corrupts the faith. Sin corrupts the faith. Verses 6 through 13. In those days now, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did whatever seemed right to him. Hey, by the way, that’s not good. If you’re just doing whatever seems good to you, that’s not good. Okay? God’s literally written His entire word to instruct us on how we should live because when we live by our idea of what’s good, that’s not good. Everyone’s just doing whatever seems right to him. There was a young man, a Levite from Bethlehem and Judah who was staying in the within the clan of Judah. The man left the town of Bethlehem in Judah to stay wherever he could. Sorry, to stay wherever he could find a place. On his way, he came to Micah’s home in the hill country of Ephraim. “Where do you come from?” Micah asked him. The Levite answers, “I’m a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah. I’m going to stay wherever I can find a place.” Micah replies, “All right, stay with me. Be my father. Be my priest, and I will give you four ounces of silver a year along with your clothing and provisions.” So the Levite went in and agreed to stay with the man. And the young man became like one of his sons. A little ironic because Micah said, “Be a dad to me.” And he’s become a son to him instead. Whatever. Verse 12, Micah consecrates the Levite and the young man becomes his priest and lives in Micah’s house. Verse 13, Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will be good to me because a Levite has become my priest.” You ought to see some red flags in this passage. The first comes from the fact that there’s a Levite wandering around wherever he could find a place. Now, give you a little bit of Bible history. When the people of Israel with their 12 tribes were coming into the lands that we now call Israel, God was giving giving them allotments and portions for each of the tribes to live in so that they wouldn’t commit civil war and start killing each other over all the best land. One of the tribes is named Levi. It’s named that because the patriarch of the tribe, that was his name, Levi. There’s this moment in the life of Israel where all the other tribes just after the Exodus are going already going away and against God’s word. And you’ve got Moses trying to call the people of Israel back to God. And the only tribe that stood with him were the Levites. So God said, “Hey, you you fought for my word with Moses in that moment. So I’m going to give y’all a special role. Instead of y’all living in a particular place of land, y’all are going to have cities everywhere through the land. And your job will be to lead my people in worship. You see the Levites, that’s like the clergy, the pastors, the priests. That’s who they were. So when this this section opens and we see a Levite just going wherever he can find a place, we ought to recognize an aimless religious leader trying to get whatever he wants wherever he wants it. Man, he’s not obeying God’s rules about where to live. He’s not trying to help the people of Israel have this love for God through worship. He’s just literally out there to get his man wherever it’s easy. I’m just drifting around. This Levite then is happy to stay with Micah and become a priest for Micah. Man, what’s worse than an aimless pastor? It’s a pastor who actively leads his church in idolatry. That’s what you’ve got here. God literally said, “Make no idols.” and have no other gods beside me. Levite says, “You’ve made an idol and you have a god besides Yahweh. I’m cool with that, man. Whatever works for you. I’d be happy to pastor this little one family church.” So, this Levite stays with Micah. You see, instead of helping the people of Israel worship God the way God deserves and demands in the tabernacle according to the law, this Levite becomes Micah’s personal priest, ministering to a household shrine. taking the worst of what was going on with all these false gods and false religion and the worst of what God said don’t do. This guy said, “I’m going to marry that and that’s what I’m going to do.” You see, without God, sin corrupts even the faith. It corrupts church. It corrupts our spiritual collective lives. Yet, with God, churches, denominations, God’s people can pursue God’s mission according to God’s mandates. Man, I feel this personally as a pastor, man, where we talk about decisions, we talk about our dreams, and I got to run this through my rubric of like, man, like, does this really please the Lord? Is this what God really wants us to do? I think about Matthew chap 28 verse 19 where Jesus in His final words gives us our heartbeat. Go make disciples. You’d be shocked to know the Southern Baptist Convention loses over a thousand churches every year. A thousand churches every year. That’s not because culture hates church. It’s not because God doesn’t have enough cash to support them. It’s not even because there aren’t any well-meaning people sitting in the pews that want a future as a church. Churches die because they stop holding up God’s word and they stop obeying the great commission. You know what happens in every church that dies? They flat out they stop caring about this and they stop caring about lost people who aren’t sitting in the room with them. Man, when a church recovers a heart for God, His word, and God’s mission, they come back to life. They just do. God honors that. God doesn’t care if the church is big. He doesn’t care if it’s small. He doesn’t care if it’s traditional or contemporary. A church that no longer honors His word or loves the lost. God does not care to continue and prosper them. He will let them die. I want to ask you a question, man. Are you willing to pursue God’s mission at all costs? Are you willing to follow God’s word no matter how uncomfortable that might make your life? The application is simple. Making disciples comes first. Even for us with Martin Hall, we’re not just raising money to beautify a room. That’s that’s the last thing that we’re doing. We are investing in a space that we use for disciplehip. There’s a lot of ways we can spend $70,000 as a church. When we spend $70,000 on a space that’s meant to help make us to help us make disciples, what we are doing is we are telling God that making disciples costs at least $70,000 to us and we are happy to write that check. What does making disciples cost to you? It might cost you a little bit of comfort to bring up Jesus with a coworker. It might cost you some time to pray for somebody. It might even cost you some money.

Without God, sin corrupts the faith, but with God, churches can pursue God’s mission. Finally, Judges chapter 18 shows us that without God, sin corrupts the nation. Without God, sin corrupts the nation. Chapter 18 admittedly, is very long. I’m going to spare us the time of reading all 31 verses. They are fascinating. Especially if anybody is a little more literarily minded, you ought to read that this afternoon. You can see how the author is framing this moment. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to summarize these 31 verses for us here.

So you got the tribe of Dan. Dan popped up in chapter 1 verse 34. Dan is also the tribe where Samson the 12th and final judge is from. Dan was given an allotment in the Holy Lands. What we all talked about earlier on the very north side of the promised land, the north side of what we today would call the land of Israel. Here’s the issue with the tribe of Dan, though, is that they are a bunch of cowards. Honestly, they go into the land and all the Amorites are still there. And Dan apparently expected the Amorites to just flee before them because what they do is these Amorites, these non-Israelite, non-Jewish people, they push the Danites back. So the Danites instead of remustering and praying that God would help them, what they do is they say, “Okay, that must not be where we’re supposed to go.” So they start to spy out other parts of the land.

On their journey, they discover Micah’s house. They hear the voice of the Levite apparently doing something with this ritual worship. And they make this Levite an offer he can’t refuse. Hey Levite, you want to be the pastor of a one family church or do you want to be the priest over all of us? What do you think the Levite chooses? The second one. They simply ply pride his heart by playing a numbers game, appealing to this Levite’s apparent lust for power, wealth, and importance. The Levites believed that making or the Levite believed choosing bigger was better. The Danites believed that having a priest would guarantee them success.

The Levite, like I said, he takes this offer. He leaves Micah and his house. He goes with the Danites as they set out to conquer a land for them. The Danites once they get to their portion of land and they do have some success, they set up this false altar, this place where they could worship Yahweh, the true God, with all these idols and this shrine stuff. And this man, this Levite, officiates over it all. This practice would remain for hundreds of years. Think about it. For hundreds of years, this tribe of Israel were worshiping an idea of God in ways that God explicitly condemned in His word. For hundreds of years, they kept doing this. Generations of priests are born officiating over these sacrifices and over these rituals. And never once did they stop. They would not stop, in fact, until King David would bring the ark of the covenant into the city of Jerusalem hundreds of years later.

I take you back to the idea of spoiled milk. You know what happens when milk spoils? It’s just a little bit starts spoiling at a time until it gets to the whole carton. It doesn’t all just turn like that. at least according to my dairy layman’s understanding. And that’s what you’re seeing in Judges 17 and 18. This issue is starting microscopically in a home. But man, before the ends, this isolated issue has grown to affect an entire tribe of Israel. Sin is corrupting even the entire this entire tribe and it’s creating a problem. It would create a problem for the nation of Israel. Man, when sin corrupts the nation, but with God, the land can be blessed. Anybody else feel like sin is ravaging our nation? That’s the least responsive I ever imagined this church would be to that statement. Anybody else feel like sin is ravaging our nation?

Okay, finally get some response, guys. This can I give you a little one-on-one? This is gonna get me in trouble. You can talk in church. In fact, when Al and I preach, it makes things a lot easier if you do talk in church. When Lindsay and Michael and others lead worship, we would actually appreciate if you just responded a little bit more. So, I’m gonna ask the question one more time. You’ve been primed.

Anybody else feel like sin is ravaging our nation? There we go. Man, we see drug problems and alcohol gripping people and financial disring of sexuality and personhood and identity. You know what’s happening? Little isolated incidents growing and corrupting an entire group of people.

Last summer, I got to sit down with Chief Trust Johnson. He’s the fire chief over at the St. Paul’s Fire District. He and I are developing a little bit of a friendship. I would call it a friendship. Maybe he calls it an annoyance. I’m not sure. And we’re sitting down and I said, “Chief Johnson, SAM wants to help you. We want to we want to be an asset to the fire department. What are some of the biggest issues you run into regularly?” Without skipping a beat, that man said substance abuse, alcoholism, and financial ruin. He said almost every call that they go on, that’s a legitimate call can be traced back to one of those three issues: where somebody isn’t managing their finances right, where somebody is giving themselves to drinking too much, or where somebody is taking drugs. He said, “Almost everything we deal with has to deal with one of those three things.” He said, “If you could help me, if Sauldam Baptist could help me, y’all would help address those three things.”

And then God gave us somebody. Robbie, man, do you not just a prayer request for me? Do Chief Johnson has been fighting issues that Celebrate Recovery is aimed to target. He’s been fighting those issues for decades. May you are a godsend to Sauldam Baptist and to the St. Paul’s Fire Department.

I want to say to everybody in this room, you may not feel like your home is on the verge of collapse and ruin. You might be listening to me and you might think, man, Celebrate Recovery, that’s for the people that are strung out. They can’t get their lives together, man. They can’t put the right shoes on their feet. I want to sit here and say Celebrate Recovery is for everybody. Now, it happens to be able to help people that are facing financial ruin and alcoholism and substance abuse. It can also help the person in the room that’s struggling with anxiety and making decisions is extremely difficult for you. It can help the person in the room where you have these codependent relationships and you don’t know why your friends keep leaving you. Man, Celebrate Recovery is for the person that can’t stop eating or struggles to eat enough and you don’t know why that is. Man, Celebrate Recovery is meant to help you work through over 40 issues and it’s one of the best ways that we can help push back the lack of flourishing in our community. My invite you Sunday, Sunday night, six o’clock here. Robbie’s getting a fantastic team. He would love to welcome you in a totally judgment-free zone that’s anonymous to the rest of the church.

Man, the book of Judges is like this marathon of sin corrupting the people of Israel. What they need is not a king. They don’t need a judge. What they need is a heart transformation. In the same way, we don’t need a better president. We don’t need a better school board. What we need is a heart transformation. We need someone to save us from how sin corrupts us. We need someone to make us pure. We need someone to transform our destructive habits. And God gave us that. He gave us a way both to remember our corruption and remember our salvation. God gave us a way to celebrate our freedom from sin and to take strength in the battle against it: the Lord’s supper.

I want to invite the deacons forward to join me up here as we begin to celebrate this incredible meal. You know this meal represents represents this final night where Jesus is with the disciples just moments before He was going to be betrayed by Judas, where Jesus knew that He was about to give His life for our salvation, for our freedom. You know Jesus, He did not theoretically take on pain and suffering. He very seriously felt that on the cross and in His in His passion. But also Jesus spiritually, man, He bore the full weight, the full consequence of your sin, your darkness, your corruption. And we celebrate what Jesus has done. We take this meal so that we can reflect on that and remind ourselves of that.

So, here’s what I want to ask you to do. First off, we take the bread and the juice together. So, as we’re passing them out, don’t go ahead and take the bread. Wait till everybody’s getting it with you. Don’t go ahead and shoot the juice. Wait till everybody gets it with you. All right. While we’re passing it out, I want you just to pray. Say, “Lord, what’s the corruption in my life? Would You free me from it?”

And so Jesus knowing that we can never purify ourselves, knowing that we can never make ourselves right, He can never make ourselves, we can never make ourselves holy, we can never make ourselves good. Jesus gave His body and His blood to be broken so we could be forgiven and cleansed from the inside out. This is the body of Christ broken for you. Take and eat.

Jesus on that night took the wine. He passed it around. He said, “This is the blood of my covenant poured out for you. If I take this little cup and I pour it on me, it’s going to leave a mark. It’s going to leave a stain.” But Jesus, when His blood is poured on our souls, it does not dirty us. It cleanses us, frees us from all unrighteousness. This is the blood of Christ spilled for you. Take and drink.

Holy Spirit, You apply these truths to our souls and You empower us to walk in freedom. I beg that for those in the room that don’t yet know the freedom of the gospel, who don’t yet know the joy of salvation, who don’t yet know the peace of being made right with You, I pray that this moment of us testifying to the gospel through this Lord’s supper, I pray that right now they would meet You in truth. God, for anybody that came in this morning with a sin just on their shoulders and just heavy for it. Pray they would walk out of here knowing that they are forgiven and they are made right before a holy God. Lord, we love You. Thank You for loving us. Amen.