Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
“Democracy!”
Finally, virtually all the nations of the world have been persuaded to drink the nectar of the gods. The ills of every continent soon will be solved by the panacea of democracy!
Don’t believe a word of that rhetoric. Haven’t you heard of the “Tyranny of the Majority”? No greater tyrant rules the lives of men than the dominant majority. Remember—it was the majority that danced in debauchery while Moses received the Ten Commandments. It was the majority of the spies sent into Canaan that brought back the wrong report. It was the majority that called for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
As human governments go, democracy brings much good. But beware—the kingdom of God on earth will never be realized by the rule of a majority. Instead, the ideal is the rule of one—the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
Theology in Judges
I’m not saying that, in this present era of God’s redemptive working, the various nations of the world should adopt as their form of government a theocracy in which Jesus Christ rules as their King. Theocracy as an organized form of government was God’s intent for Israel under the older covenant. By this merger of civic and religious affairs, the state government of Israel was charged by God to enforce the true religion while excluding all other religious expressions by the use of force. But in this present day of God’s longsuffering and grace, the various state governments have not been given this responsibility. When Jesus returns in glory, He will enforce true religion, banishing from His kingdom all who do not worship Him alone.
On the other hand, God’s people desperately need a sovereign over their lives right now! They desperately need a ruler who will direct the course of their lives. Otherwise, chaos will reign just as it did in the days of the judges.
“Chaos without a king” is the theme that runs throughout this whole period of the judges. A striking phrase occurs four times in the final chapters of the book of Judges, summarizing this concept: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25). A series of occurrences in these last five chapters drives home the theme: God’s people must have the Lord Jesus Christ as their King.
The curtain of these last chapters of Judges rises in the midst of a melodramatic moment. A young man named Micah is making confession to his mother: “ ‘Do you remember the eleven hundred pieces of silver that were stolen from you? Remember? You cursed the thief, whoever he might be. Well, I am the one who took your treasure’ ” (Judg. 17:2).
Not only has the son violated the eighth commandment by stealing the silver; he also has violated the fifth commandment by showing such blatant disrespect toward his mother. But when the mother hears that her own dear son is the one who committed the crime, she totally reverses her attitude. “ ‘Blessed be my son of the Lord,’ ” she exclaims. Because it is her son who has stolen her money, he must be blessed rather than cursed. It’s a matter of sheer prejudicial favoritism toward her “beloved son,” who in her rationalizations really meant no harm.
The mother then proceeds to do a very strange thing with her restored treasure of silver—only it’s not so strange in the context of the chaos of the days of the judges. She dedicates her money “ ‘to the covenant Lord … to make a graven image’ ” (Judg. 17:3). How can the confusion be any greater? She takes consecrated money and uses it to make a graven image that is dedicated to God? Had not God in His covenant specifically stated that His people were never to make any graven image?
Yet the confusion is compounded by both the mother and the son. The woman violates her consecration of the retrieved treasure by giving her son only two hundred of the eleven hundred pieces of silver. Her son then uses the money to construct his own little temple, complete with the idol and a priestly ephod for himself. Now the mother and her son have broken the first, the second, and the third commandments. She has placed a false god alongside the true and only Lord of heaven and earth. Also, she has violated her own sacred oath. And at the same time, the son has denigrated almighty God by representing Him in the form of an idol made with human hands.
Nothing dishonors God more than syncretism, the joining of the worship of the true God to the acknowledgement of any other “god” devised by the imaginations of men. In the West today, syncretism comes to fullest expression through the worship of material things by a professedly Christian society. The mall has become the modern-day temple, and materialism is its god. Wherever confessing Christians allow the pursuit of the latest in clothes, cars, and computers to rival Christ as king, they are guilty of the modern version of syncretism.
So the Scriptural words that conclude this brief narrative speak directly to our world today: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 17:6). The chaos that follows should be clear to all. Every life without Jesus Christ as its only King must suffer the divine judgment on syncretism, both in this life and in the one that is to come.