"Ten Shekels and a Shirt"

An Adaptation of a Sermon by Paris Reidhead:
By: Stan Moody

August 3, 2008
Judges 17 – 18:6

This is the second Sunday of our 15th year here at the NMMH Church. In some ways, we can be proud that we have lasted this long – the longest settled ministry in the history of this church established in 1792. In other more important ways, however, we continue to struggle with what it means to be a Christian in an un-Christian world – a world that systematically and consistently places its hope not in the person and work of Jesus Christ but in our own power to make ourselves happy. The right to the pursuit of happiness is a bedrock principle of our nation that seems to have gotten out of control.

The thought for the sermon this morning came from a classic sermon by Paris Reidhead, a preacher of the mid-20th Century and, ironically, in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, where I spent the first 14 years of my church life. I adopted the title and some of the thoughts because they seemed so appropriate for our day.

I have stumbled along with the rest of you during this past 14 years. I hope, however, that the focus of this ministry has been to challenge us to forsake our pride in humanism (or good old Yankee independence) and to trust God to move us and mold us and make us instruments, not of happiness for others, but instruments of glory for God. The danger we face as we experience a little bit of success here and there, however, is that we will come to believe that God cannot get along without us.

We are facing an election year when one of the candidates is asking us to trust him in a sort of Messianic way. He is the agent of change; he wants to become our hope. What a temptation it is to want to believe that. I remember when Jimmy Carter was the agent of change and hope. His presidency promoted the belief that all you had to do was to believe in some inherent goodness of mankind - believe that we could join hands around the globe and sing “We Are the People;” believe that we could coax forth that inherent goodness that lies within us.

The problem is that if everyone is inherently good and can be coaxed to exhibit their good side, there is no place for the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. There is no place for a church that teaches repentance and forgiveness of sin because there is no inherent sin – only a poor self-esteem.

Now, having said that, the alternative is even scarier – running around the world stamping out evil where it is conveniently found and declaring ourselves as good without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as atonement for our sin.

As I walk through the prison every week, I have to remind myself that I am not there to make inmates happy. Making them happy is just another example of the humanism of the Christian church in America. You can make them happy on the way to Hell. No; my job there is to be available in the expectation that there might be one here or there who might be so fed up with his sin that he is seeking Jesus as the remedy.

If I approach my job from that point of view, I can be comfortable with the Muslims, the pagans, the Native Americans, the Wiccans and every group except the evangelical Christians. It matters not what others believe. In fact, it is a good thing that they are trying to make themselves more human and loving. That works for all of us, doesn’t it? It makes easier the job of guarding the prison. When it comes to evangelical Christians, however, I have to hold them to a different standard. They claim the cross of Jesus Christ, but their religion is not a religion of suffering and following Christ but a religion of do’s and don’ts. They claim the Holy Spirit, but they fail to honor the gifts of the Holy Spirit in their daily lives. They claim the truth, but they have perverted the truth for Christianity without Christ.

Several of us here are brainstorming about how we can consolidate the various ministries that have spun out of this little congregation. In the process of doing that, however, I have to very carefully think through what we are doing. Are we just another humanistic social organization trying to make people happier without Christ? Are we just a model of religious humanism, or are we Christians in the true sense of the word?


Tom Oliver reminds us from time to time that the ultimate end to which we are striving as a church is to be able to say with the Apostle Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me…I do not set aside the glory of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal. 2:20, 21). A certain degree of happiness may very well be achieved through the law – through a Messianic type of President, or through the exporting of something akin to Democracy, whatever that may mean at the moment.

The Christian, however, does not set aside the glory of God in the process of making people happier or healthier. If that could be done, Christ died for nothing. That is the task of the world’s religions – not the task of the Christian church. We are not called to make heaven on earth for anyone. We are called to be crucified with Christ so that we are enabled to bring God’s message of love to those who have no interest in heaven and are in love with their sin.

In a few moments, I will be reminding you of a number of human failures down through redemptive history. First, however, I want to go back to this story of Micah, a person to whom I had never given a minute’s thought until this week.

A key verse is Judges 17:6: “In those days, Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” Sounds like a Baptist or a Congregational church, doesn’t it? Micah was a thief. He stole 1100 shekels of silver from his mother, later confessed and returned it to her. She dedicated the money to the Lord and, for some strange reason, thought that the best use of the money was to carve an image and cast an idol. In the process of spending the money for the forging, however, we find that she kept back 900 of the 1100 shekels. She took the middle road of pragmatism, you might say. What happened to the 900 shekels, we don’t know.

This happened right around the 12th Century BC, just before Samuel anointed Saul as the first king of Israel. It is the first recorded instance of idolatry in Israel. God’s people could only be happy, you see, if they adopted the practices of their pagan neighbors. God forbid that they should be different – strangers and aliens in a hostile land and totally reliant on God for their security.

What we have here is a religion of expediency. Micah wanted to build a shrine. So he made an ephod and some idols with his mother’s money and installed one of his sons as his priest. But a better deal came along. A young Levite wandered in from Bethlehem up to Mount Ephraim to see if he could make a better life for himself at some other place than Bethlehem. He came to Micah’s house. Being a Levite, this young man was a priest of the tribe of Levi. Micah saw an opportunity. Offer the young man a salary, food, lodging and a suit of clothes, and he could have his own priest. He would even call him “Father.” Everything was in place. “Now I know that the Lord will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest.”

The deal was sealed, idols and all.

The tribe of Dan was one of the few tribes of Israel that had no homeland. They had been pushed around by the Amorites. Mount Ephraim looked like a place they could settle. So they sent out some scouts. What they found was Micah, a priest of God and some idols – a compromised religious expression. For ten shekels and a shirt, one of the anointed of God had moved up in the world from where he had been in Bethlehem. It was about to get better.

The scouts liked what they saw. They even managed to get a blessing from the young priest. Since this priest seemed to be under the protection of God, perhaps both he and Micah’s idols could become part of the new hope for the tribe of Dan.

What did the priest tell the scouts when they asked him to inquire of God whether their journey would be successful? “Go in peace. Your journey has the Lord’s approval.” They came to Laish, just north of the Dead Sea, and discovered that the people there were living in safety and were prosperous. They were “unsuspecting and secure,” the Scriptures tell us. Who could blame the Dannites for figuring that if they had the priest and the idols, they would find happiness in Laish? What this priest offered was the hope of humanism – happiness in this life while in ignorance and disregard of what might happen in the next life. The glory of God was the furthest thing from their minds.

They came back to Mount Ephraim with 600 men armed with WMD’s, stole the idols and told the young priest to keep his mouth shut and join with them. The hook was this: “Don’t say a word. Come with us, and be our father and priest. Isn’t it better that you serve a tribe and clan in Israel as priest rather than just one man’s household?” (v. 19).

Did the young priest have even a moment of conscience? We are told in the very next verse that “the priest was glad. He took the ephod, the other household gods and the carved image and went along with the people (of Dan).” Suddenly, this wandering priest discovered that ten shekels and a shirt were not enough. He was about to become high priest for a whole tribe. He was moving up in the world, so he becomes complicit in a robbery. You might say he was working on his liturgical resume.

It gets better. They went on to Laish, reported to be inhabited by a peaceful and unsuspecting people – probably some of the original Palestinians. They attacked these unsuspecting people with the sword and burned down their city, rebuilt the city and settled there. We are told that they set up for themselves idols and continued to use the idols Micah had made, while all the time the house of God was in Shiloh, some 80 miles from Laish – about 20 miles less than the distance Jesus had to travel from Galilee to Jerusalem.

If we were to apply this teaching to the evangelical church in America, we can see where a little bit of legalism and a little bit of grace has been mixed together to make a utilitarian and expedient Christianity in the interest of being accepted by non-believers. The test of all practices within the church of Jesus Christ ultimately comes down to the question, “Does it work?” If it succeeds, it is good. And yet, we are faced with the reality that according to that principle, some of the greatest failures of the ages have been people whom God has honored the most.

Bill Cosby has immortalized Noah for American Christians, I think. In his routine on Noah, a routine that he calls “Right,” Noah is introduced as a hard working carpenter who doesn’t need any kind of interruption. When God speaks to him, he says, “What is this? Am I on Candid Camera?”

Noah may have been a good carpenter or shipbuilder, but he was a failure as a preacher. His wife and three children and their wives were all the converts he had – seven converts after 120 years of preaching. Most mission boards would have asked him to resign long before this. Yet, consider the impact that he made in redemptive history. His righteousness was what prevented God from destroying His human creation and starting all over again.

Jeremiah was given the terrible assignment of preaching to a doomed nation and achieving zero results. He lost out with the people, the leadership and everyone but God. Today, however, it is Jeremiah’s prophecy that helps hold together the eternal plan of God through Jesus Christ from Adam to Revelation.

The Lord Jesus Christ was another colossal failure. He could not even keep 12 disciples together. He organized no church or denomination. He never built a school. While James Dobson has made his hundreds of millions on teaching us to “Focus on the Family,” Jesus told us that the enemies of the Gospel would be the members of our own families and that whoever was not willing to leave family and follow Him was not worthy of Him. He preached for 3 years, healed thousands of people, fed thousands of people, but when it was over, He had 11 disciples and probably 100 others who were interested enough to see Him through to His Ascension. Yet, what an impact He made.

We are told that David Livingston gave his life to missionary work in Africa and, at the end, may have had only a couple of converts. Today, millions claim Christ as Lord in Africa. William Carey labored in China for a handful of converts. Today, believers in Jesus Christ in China are estimated to be nearly 100M souls.

The Pilgrims who first landed at Plymouth Rock nearly all died of starvation that first winter, and their brand of the Gospel did not survive the second generation. Yet, it was their vision and their work that gave rise to this great nation that has spread the Gospel throughout the world and shared its resources with billions.

The list goes on and on – failures who planted the seed for others to water and still others to harvest. This raises the question as to our standards of success. By what are we to judge our lives and our ministry? Putting it another way, “Is God an end, or is He a means to an end?”

Are we going to be like Levites who serve God for ten shekels and a shirt? Are we serving people in the name of God, or are we serving God? This Levite who performed religious services was looking not to glorify God but was looking for a place that would give him security and a name for himself. Perhaps that was the point at which religion officially became a means of making a living.

It has always been easy for Evangelicals to point to liberals and accuse them of a gospel of humanism – the happiness of man with little or no thought to where man is going. In our day, however, Evangelicals have fallen victim to the same heresy. They say, “We believe in the inspiration of the Bible! We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ! We believe in Hell! We believe in Heaven! We believe in all these things!” The whole plan of salvation has come down to an intellectual assent to a few statements of doctrine. A person becomes a Christian because he can assent to a few basic things. He receives a pat on the back and a big smile with, “Brother, you’re saved. Let me add you to my mailing list!”

The religion of the Evangelical, then, has more to do with making you happy than with glorifying God. It has more to do today with changing the political order than it does with changing hearts and lives. It has more to do today with creating Heaven on earth than it does with living out the reality of the Sermon on the Mount.

“Accept Jesus so you can go to Heaven! You don’t want to go to that old nasty burning Hell when there is a beautiful Heaven up there!” In light of the suffering and sacrifice of God’s only Son, that statement is about as selfish as it gets, isn’t it? In fact, it is the complete opposite of Christianity. When he purchased a priest for 10 shekels and a shirt, Micah said, “Now I know the Lord will be good to me.” That was selfishness! The Levite, who was looking for a place, fell right into it.

Today, we have covered over the doctrine of sin and redemption until we have convinced ourselves that God is in Heaven for our happiness. We forget that God’s desire for our happiness is not the prime objective; happiness is a by-product of the committed, crucified life.
Humanism says, “The chief end of all being is the happiness of man.” Christianity says, “The chief end of all being is the glory of God!” One is all about the deification of man. The other is all about the glorification of God.

There is only one reason for a sinner to repent, and that is because Jesus the Christ deserves the worship, adoration, love and obedience of the heart. A person comes to the cross and embraces death with Christ, not because it is a path to paradise, but because it is the only way by which God can get the glory out of a human being. Anything else, including all our skills, glorifies us rather than God.

Hear the cry of the repentant heart: “”Lord Jesus, I desire to obey you and love you and do whatever you want me to do as long as I live, even if I go to Hell at the end of the road. You are worthy to be loved, worthy to be obeyed and worthy to be served. I am not trying to cut a deal with you, for I have nothing to offer but my own sinfulness.”

That is what it means to live for the glory of God. That is the only means by which God can be glorified through our lives. If our acceptance of Christ requires that there be a guarantee of Heaven when we die – a quid pro quo deal, we have accepted Him for all the wrong reasons.

Eternal life begins right now – not in the “sweet-by-and-by.”

The story is told of a Chinese Christian who visited America. When asked his impressions, he said, “What impressed me most about America is what Americans can accomplish without God.”
That’s it, isn’t it - accomplishing great things without God because accomplishing great things is the American way, with or without God.

As we think about the past and the future of this little church, let’s not only be willing to have been a failure for the cause of Christ, but let’s set a new course for the future. Let’s reject a utilitarian Christianity that makes God a means, rather the glorious end that He is. Let’s resign from American evangelicalism. Let’s tell Micah that we are through. We are no longer going to be priests serving for ten shekels and a shirt. Let’s tell the tribe of Dan that we are through. Instead, let’s cast ourselves at the nail pierced feet of the Son of Man and tell Him that we are going to obey Him, serve Him and worship Him as long as we live because, and only because, He is worthy!