Monday, April 5, 2010

"Peaceful Village -- Easy Target"

Scripture Passage



Scripture Focus

Now in those days Israel had no king. And the tribe of Dan was trying to find a place where they could settle, for they had not yet moved into the land assigned to them when the land was divided among the tribes of Israel. (Judges 18:1 NLT)

Observation

I find myself more disturbed than blessed. I know that about Judges (and recognize that maybe it’s just a personal thing that no one else experiences quite like I do), but the deeper I read into Judges the more difficult it becomes to find anything positive to hang your hat on.

I’m ignoring Samson. I get it that every great man of God has “feet of clay” (a Biblical metaphor, by the way—cf. Daniel 2:31ff). But what a shame—what a tragic loss for the people of God—to have a leader who so consistently rejected God’s directives that, in the end, the result of his life was at least as much sorrow and loss as it was joy and victory.

I’m thinking, today, of the less familiar story of Micah, the renegade priest, and the tribe of Dan—who “…had not yet moved into the land assigned to them when the land was divided” (Judges 18:1 NLT).

Here’s a tribe—a people—who had an “assigned place”…specific territory God had promised them. But they refused to take it. (In that regard, they are not unlike the entire first generation that came out of Egypt under Moses.) So, instead of possessing what God had promised, the tribe of Dan finds a priest-for-hire who (in the name of God) condones the slaughter of a defenseless village!

Reject the sometimes-difficult challenge of engaging and receiving God’s best and you can begin to believe anything…and find a “priest” to support it—believing even that God’s hand is on you when you presume to possess a place that shouldn’t be yours. I don’t want to be there—either as “priest” or “possessor”! What God has granted, I long to possess—but nothing more, and nothing less.

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