Cancel

Tabletalk Subscription
You have {{ remainingArticles }} free {{ counterWords }} remaining.You've accessed all your free articles.
Unlock the Archives for Free

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 Now

Already receive Tabletalk magazine every month?

Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.

{{ error }}Need help?

I was getting ready to sell my truck when my friend Laurence told me I couldn’t. He knew the truck’s history. I had wanted a truck for years. I window-shopped for trucks and scanned the classified ads just to fuel my imagination. Finally, a friend who was being transferred to China practically gave me his truck. How I loved it. I still talked about trucks all the time. When I would teach classes, I would park my truck by a window so I could see it. I drove it everywhere. And so it got older. My love for it began to wane during the second summer with no air conditioning. Also, I could take only two of my babies with the in me truck, and then only if I was willing to forgo using reverse, second, and fourth gears. As it approached two hundred thousand miles, I began to doubt its reliability. I was spending more and more time and money at the repair shop. And so I began thinking of selling it.

But Laurence would hear none of it. “You can’t sell that truck; it’s God’s truck,” he said. “God knew how much you wanted a truck, and He gave you one. And now you’re going to trade it in on another truck? Not while I’m standing next to you.”

Laurence was wrong. God provided a bigger truck, with low mileage and air conditioning. But his insistence on the issue served this purpose—it made me check my heart and check it again. How had I gone from joy to frustration in the space of two years? Was I grumbling in the face of a gift for which I had longed? How long would it be, now that I had a better truck, until I started wishing for a still newer, larger, cooler truck?

Men are finite creatures. The only shadow of doubt over that conviction is the seemingly infinite capacity of our hearts to want more. We tell ourselves that satisfaction is right around the corner, but it always stays one step ahead of us. The problem is not merely that such can cause us sadness, that we lose the joy of being satisfied, but that our lack of gratitude, our habit of looking our gift horses in the mouth, can and does lead us not only into temptation but into sin. It is a short series of steps from “This is really nice Lord, now could you do it again, only better?” to “That was nice Lord, but what have you done for me lately?” to “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”

When we believe we are due not merely the best things but anything, we throw the law of God by the wayside in our pursuit of what we want. Consider the Levite in Judges 17–18. When we meet this Levite, we find that he is a sojourner from Bethlehem. We are not told how this man of the cloth has come to be without work, though we may discern the reason as the story unfolds. First, he meets Micah, who is introduced to the reader as one who has stolen eleven hundred shekels of silver from his mother. Since there is honor among thieves (and since he is under the curse of his mother), he returns the money and receives two things from her. First, she blesses him for his repentance: ‘ “May you be blessed by the Lord, my son” ’ (17:2). Second, she asks him to take some of the money and see that it is fashioned into an idol that he can keep in his shrine, along with an ephod and some other idols.

Micah obviously was not brought up well, and he returns the favor, bringing covenantal curses upon his son by making him a priest, sure evidence of the sad refrain from Judges: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Why is Micah like this? Surely some of the responsibility can be laid at his mother’s feet. He not only has learned well his lessons at the hearth, but in Sunday school also. Not satisfied with an idol made from his mother’s wealth and attended to by his son, he seizes the opportunity to hire a professional when the Levite comes to town. “Come,” he reasons, “work here in my house of worship. I want you, you want a job, and everything will work out just fine.”

The Levite takes the gig, but only until a better offer comes along. When the children of Dan, out looking for greener pastures themselves, come to steal Micah’s idols, the Levite seizes his chance. He is offered a larger parish, as Micah’s plunderers, numbering six hundred, take the Levite to be their own priest.

As is so often the case in Judges, we see the decay of syncretism move from the heathen to the priests to the tribes, all of whom are out searching for bluer skies. None of them are grateful for the provision of God. Ingratitude, like courage, is contagious. When we forget that God is our provider, and that He provides with perfect wisdom, it is no wonder that we end up wrestling over every stray fig. It is no wonder that we end up saying and doing whatever it takes to take whatever we want.

However, when we remember that He will give us our daily bread, and remember that this is not our due but His grace, then we hold on loosely to the gifts and cling to the Giver because our lives depend on it. When we hold on loosely, we find not merely a stoic peace but an Epicurean delight in God’s provision. When our eyes are not checking out the other side of the fence, we feast on the grass on our side. We find it greener than green, and the water stiller than still. And when we are satisfied in Him, we delight to keep His law.

The Image of Idolatry

A Priestly Upgrade

Keep Reading Returning Thanks

From the November 2001 Issue
Nov 2001 Issue