Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Approval, Appetite, Ambition
- Approval: We all need to feel as though we are accepted. When we seek the approval of God, our Up is in the right place. But when we seek the approval of other people besides God, we open the door to pursuing false gods and risk putting someone or something other than God in our Up position.
- Appetite: We all have needs that need to be filled. When we allow ourselves to be filled with the people and things that God brings into our life, we will be satisfied because our In will be in proper focus. But when we try to fill ourselves with our own desires we end up frustrated by an insatiable hunger.
- Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive. When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus. But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.
What a neat story of humanity going wrong. We meet Micah and his mother while they are
practicing typical human behavior. Micah
steals. His mom pronounces a curse upon
whoever stole her money, not realizing that it was his own son. The son repents. The mother doesn’t know what to do about the
curse, so she offers up a blessing instead.
To try and make things right in the world, they even decide to make an
idol and an ephod to God. They make one
of Micah’s sons a priest. They even find
a Levite and pay him to come and live with them. They are grasping at straws with respect to
being spiritual and getting all of it wrong.
They may even have slightly good intentions. But it’s all gone badly wrong.
It begins with appetite.
Micah wants the money. And this
is no small sum, mind you. He steals
1,100 pieces of silver. To put that in
perspective, the Levite is willing to come and live with Micah for 10 silver
pieces a year. Micah essentially steals
110 years worth of income from his mother.
That’s appetite for you! Micah’s
appetite gets the best of him. Rather
than being filled by God and His ways, Micah seeks the satiation of his love of
money and the ability to buy happiness.
Here’s the problem, though.
The fulfillment of the appetite leads to an issue with approval. Suddenly Micah is no longer in the approval
of his mother. Actually, he finds
himself cursed by his mother! In an
attempt to rediscover her approval, he returns the money and repents. That’s a good thing! But then in an attempt to find approval with
God Micah starts to build idols and ordains people who have no right to be
ordained. Micah’s sense for approval
doesn’t resolve itself well, either.
This leads us to ambition.
Micah wants to be successful. He
wants to prove that his mother’s curse won’t come true and he’ll be blessed
instead. So he makes an idol, sets up
his son as a priest, and finds himself a Levite that he can bring into the
family payroll. He is trying to
demonstrate his success. He even says as
much when he says that surely God will bless him because of all that he’s
done. Micah’s misguided ambition leads
him down a bad path, too.
In order to have our needs for appetite, approval, and ambition to
be properly resolved, we need to humble ourselves before the Lord and listen to
what he truly desires. When we chase
after our own desires we end up grasping at straws as we see Micah doing
here. What would have been better would
be for Micah to stop trying to prove himself in every way and to humbly go
before the spiritual people around him and seek their counsel and the counsel
of the Lord.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment