Dennis Tuuri

And thou shalt have no more soothsayers. Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee. And thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands. And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee. So will I destroy thy cities, and I will execute vengeance and anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.

We really come to a sort of a concluding section of the book of Micah this morning.

I mentioned last week that the verses we’ll be talking about this morning sort of round off several sections of the book of Micah and we’ll go into a new section starting next week or actually the week after next. Gary North will be here next Sunday. But these particular verses can be seen in three different ways as rounding off a section. First of all, you could look at all of the first five chapters of the book of Micah as one central section and remember we started with Micah 1 and the calling of God to a covenant courtship court scene in which judgment against the whole earth is pronounced and by the time we reach the end of chapter 5 here we have that picture kind of rounded off where he began with talking about judgment upon the world beginning it with his covenant people.

So here in the verses we just read we have the talking of the judgment against his covenant people then the final concluding verse of God’s final judgment against the world and the cleansing of all idolatry from the entire world. So that whole thing it could be seen as comprising one section and indeed many people see it that way.

Additionally, however, in the midst of that section, you could break off the first three chapters of Micah that talk about judgment primarily in terms of the sins involved at the covenant nation. And then the last two chapters which talk primarily about blessing and about having now broken down the mountain of men, so to speak, establish the mountain of God, beginning at Micah 4:1 and Micah 5. The last few verses talk about the concluding portion of the establishment of that mountain. And so that also can be seen as rounding off in the last two chapters we’ve looked at Micah 4 and 5. And they’ve been really for me exciting chapters.

It’s always good to remind ourselves the purpose of judgment in a nation is to the end that men would be obedient once more to God in a fuller sense. And we’ve talked about that a lot over the last two chapters. And this morning this rounds off that section.

One other parallel in the section before us as we pointed out last week was that in Micah 4 in that particular section in the first four verses there was a description of God’s establishment of his holy mountain as opposed to the mountain of men again and then there’s a liturgical response in verse 5 of Micah 4: “all peoples will walk every one in the name of his God and we’ll walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever” and so the people respond to the truth of God’s establishment of his holy mountain that will come definitively with the coming of Messiah Jesus Christ they respond by saying that we will walk faithfully to our God regardless of how the nations walk.

And so now concluding chapter 5, which talks about the birth of the shepherd king, the destruction and the judgment of the great serpent, the great snake, Assyrian Nimrod, pointing of course to Satan and his work, the serpent treading church. All that information then comes down to a response now that God calls us to in a very defined sense here to remove idolatry from our midst. And he makes a declaration that he will indeed remove idolatry from his church. And then from on the nations.

And so these five verses can be seen also as kind of rounding off or restating in more detail verse 5 of chapter 4.

Now one other thing I wanted to mention from last week was that we read in the last verse of what we talked about last week, verse 9, thy hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries and all thine enemies shall be cut off. And we were reading in Psalm 106, this week. And in verse 26 of Psalm 106, it says, “Then God swore to them with uplifted hand that he would make them fall in the desert.” And this, of course, is talking about the people in the wilderness. And God having an uplifted hand there and swearing with his hand raised as it were the way we swear when we go into court, so to speak. God says, “Look, and I’m swearing with an uplifted hand, I’m going to cut you off in the wilderness.

The people will die in their wilderness wanderings and won’t enter the promised land.” And so, it’s a statement when God lifts his hand like that this is a covenantal truth that will come to pass. swearing as it were. And when it talks in verse 9 of Micah 5 that we have our hand lifted up against our adversary, I think that connotation is there as well. Of course, also the idea of the hand being used in terms of waging warfare, recognizing, of course, that we wage warfare through the preaching of the gospel of Christ.

I guess what I’m trying to point out here is that there’s a sense in which the warfare called for in verse 9 is a holy warfare of sorts. It calls us to go forward into all the world. Preaching the gospel of the Messiah, bringing men to submission, driving back the spiritual darkness that enslaves men, and making people aware that they’re either part of the elect community of God or they’re part of the community that perishes in death.

That we’re called to go forward into that warfare in verse 9. And then these next verses that we’ve just read, verses 10 through 14, talk about the need for us as we go into that warfare to be clean, to be set apart, sanctified as it were, for the work that God has called us to do. God was first do a destructive work within Israel’s borders or within the church community itself in the times of the Messiah’s reign now before the war of the nations can be waged fully and successfully.

We used to every Sunday, I think we will again this Sunday during our communion service use the form that has us sing Psalm 47. And we certainly are used to this church singing that God will subdue the peoples under us, the nations under our feet. But it’s important to recognize that there is a precursor to that fact.

Leslee Allen in his commentary on Micah and this section says the following. It is people who have first felt the burning heat of divine fury upon their own community and culture who are the who are to witness to its operations upon their enemies. Not to an Israel as they are, but to an Israel cauterized of their faithlessness will God show himself as their strength and shield. So, prior to and part of the continuing warfare that goes on between the covenant community and the preaching of the gospel of Christ and bringing them into submission to him, part of the necessity of engaging that warfare is to cut off the idols from our own midst. And to show that what God has accomplished in us will then be accomplished in the nations around us as well.

Some introductory remarks about this specific text. Here we have five couplets of statements here. The first being that God will cut off horses and destroy chariots. The next that he’ll cut off cities and throw down strongholds. The third that he’ll cut off witchcrafts and you’ll have no more soothsayers. And the fourth that he’ll cut off graven images and standing images. And that there’ll be no more worshipping of the work of your hands. And the fifth couplet that he’ll pluck out groves and destroy cities.

And so there’s this five-fold repetition of God’s removal of idolatry from our midst. This five-fold statement of this removal indicating extreme completeness of it. And it’s interesting that if you go through this that there are four repeated references, a specific Hebrew word that means or is translated to cut off or to root out or to destroy.

In the first four of those five couplets, beginning in the first verse, we have in verse 10, it shall come to pass in that day, sayeth the Lord, that I will cut off the horses. And so verse 10 begin with a single short clause saying when this will bring this will come to pass and it identifies it as it has throughout these two chapters Micah 4 and 5 as in that day the day of the Lord the coming of Messiah and the establishment of his kingdom in that day and then he goes through these series of actions that he will do in that day and they start with the words that I will cut off and he goes on to say he’ll cut off four specific times and then finally in verse 14 that word cut off is changed to pluck out. And it’s almost as if you go here from an intensity of the removal of the idolatry from the people.

There’s a cutting off four times spoken of as specific things we’ll talk about in a minute. And then there’s an uprooting, a plucking out, a solution that gets to the roots of the problem as it were. Now, that is implied in the terms cut off, but much more visually described in the term to root out. And so, what it means is as we conclude with that fifth statement of God’s removal of idolatry from the covenant community to prepare them for the work of going into to the nations that removal of idolatry is a plucking out. It’s an uprooting. It’s radical in that sense.

You know radical numbers are root numbers. And it was I believe the Marxists and the communists who decided to take that term radical relating to a root number and apply it to their particular movement that sought to remove the root cause of societal injustice. And so that’s really a perversion of the truth. But it’s important that we recognize that Christianity gives a root solution. Christianity is not moderate in that sense. Christianity is radical. It gets to the roots by removing idolatry and rooting it out and not just cutting it off so we can grow back up from those same roots, but it’s a rooting out action.

So God goes through specific couplets here that talks about what he will root out. And I’ve decided to lump the first two couplets together. The cutting off of horses, the destruction of chariots, the cutting off of cities, and the throwing off of throwing down of strongholds as under the first section of your outline, the removal of idolatry of the military state.

Now, the first two terms there are horses and chariots. So, cut off horses, he’ll destroy chariots in verse 10. And those things are really offensive weaponry that God will remove in terms of idolatry from the covenant nations. Chariots and horses, that theme, those two occurrences of those words together in verses are quite common throughout the Old Testament. Egypt is talked about in terms of chariots and horses specifically at the time of the Exodus.

And indeed when God brought Israel out of Egypt, remember in the Red Sea, he didn’t just overthrow the Egyptians, he drowned the chariots and horses. It tells us that quite specifically that God delivers pe the Israelite nation, but he destroys the Egyptians with their chariots and horses in the Red Sea. And God then warned the children of Israel that they would see chariots and horses in the land in which they were to go into to possess.

And he warned them repeatedly that when you see chariots and horses in that nation and a strong nation, don’t be afraid. But remember what I did in Egypt. Remember that I brought you out of the most powerful nation on the face of the world at that time with probably the most chariots and horses. And I led you out of there and I destroyed those chariots and horses, not through your efforts, but through my defense of you.

And so he warns them that when they’re going to go into the promised land, they’ll have this fear of chariots and horses. They’re to overcome that by remembering what he’s accomplished in his destruction of Egypt’s chariots and horses.

There’s a big battle described in the 11th chapter of Joshua. And God tells Joshua not to be afraid again that he’s uh that he will deliver his people. And he further instructs Joshua quite specifically to after having been successful in this battle in terms of one of the conquests of the promised land in Joshua 11.

He tells Joshua specifically to hamstring the horses and to burn the chariots when they’re delivered up into his hand. So God in an essence warns Joshua that not only do you not have to be afraid of these things, I want you to not participate in them because you’ll begin to rely upon them militarily. And so Joshua is commanded to hamstring them and burn the chariots. And Joshua did that. And so there is evidently here some danger of having multitude of horses and chariots in the land.

We know that in Deuteronomy 17, they were specifically instructed that the king was not to multiply horses to himself. And I guess you got to remember here that we think of horses primarily as you know recreational sort of things. or maybe even plowing devices. But throughout the Old Testament, both the history the secular histories and also the biblical history, horses are seen in relationship to chariots.

Horses are seen as offensive weaponry as chariots were. A horse, two, three or four two horses usually would draw a chariot. There’d be two men in that chariot, one to steer the chariot and the other to shoot with a bow and arrow. Eventually, they went to teams of three where you had a shield bearer to protect the two, the driver and the and the man with the arrows. But it’s important to recognize that horses here is not some sort of thing like we have horses today.

The Hittites I don’t think probably used their horses to pull chariots and go attack people but that was the common use of horses at the time of the writings of the scriptures of the Old Testament. And the king wasn’t to multiply horses and that meant that the king was not to build up a large offensive weaponry under his command.

Now Joshua was faithful and he did hamstring those horses and he did burn those chariots. Later however David in 2 Samuel 8 also fights a big battle and still trying to wipe out the enemies in the land of the people of God. The big battle in 2 Samuel 8 is with the Philistines. And again there are horses and chariots involved and David does not hamstring all the horses and burn all the chariots. David hamstrings the chariot horses but specifically the scriptures tell us and the word but is there.

And I guess you should in your mind I think when you read that verse when you see that word but there recognize something as important is following here. David hamstring the chariot horses, but he reserved enough of them for 100 chariots for his own purposes. Now, David and failing to get rid of the horses and allowing himself to multiply just a small number of horses for the purpose of chariot bearing, that sin that David is allowed to come into the kingdom then is multiplied in his children.

Absalom in 2 Samuel 15 prepares himself chariots and horses and 50 men to run before him. And then Finally, that is all played out in Solomon who in First Kings 4 is said to have 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, 12,000 horsemen. And so chariots and horses were always a temptation for Israel to trust in them instead of the God who delivered them out of the hand of Egypt with all their chariots and horses.

Now, why did God want the Israelites to go without these weapons of warfare that would of course been able to be used defensively as well to threaten as a deterrence, right? Solomon had great deterrence with all those chariots and horses. Why did God want the people of Israel to go defenseless? And of course, the answer is that he didn’t want the people of Israel to go defenseless. God just has a different idea of national defense than men frequently have then or now.

Let’s look at 2 Kings 6:15-23. When the attendant of the man of God had risen early and had gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots, the thing armies always had, an army with horses and chariots were circling the city and his servant said to him, “Alas, my master, what shall we do?” So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Now that verse should strike a response. Greater is he who is with us than he who’s in the world. And so we have that statement here given in its original form. Do not fear. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.

And he goes on then to pray. In verse 17, then Elisha prayed and said, “Oh Lord, I pray open his eyes that he may see.” And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elijah. See, God’s spiritual forces are here given a visual image to Elijah’s servant. His eyes are open. He can see God’s forces that are around his people to protect them. And so God shows his people in a very visual way here that indeed greater are those who are with us than those who are with them. Our chariots and horses are horses of fire and chariots of fire now and have great power from God.

Verse 18. When they had come down to him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Strike this people with blindness, I pray.” So he struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha. Then Elisha said to them, “This is not the way, nor is this the city. Follow me, and I’ll bring you to the man whom you seek.” And he brought them to Samaria. And it came about when they had come into Samaria that Elisha said, “Oh Lord, open the eyes of these men that they may see.” So the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw, and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria.

And the king of Israel, when he saw them, said to Elisha, “My father shall I kill them. Shall I kill them?” And he answered, “You shall not kill them. When you kill those that you have taken captive, with your sword and with your bow, set bread and water before them that they may eat and drink and go to their master.” So he prepared a great feast for them. And when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. And the marauding bands of Syria did not come again into the land of Israel.

Now, that would be a real interesting verse to just spend a whole hour talking about in terms of strategies for warfare. and the idea of conversion of men. Well, you bring them uh to God as it were through God’s supernatural intervention, then they’re converted and they no longer attack the people of God. But in any event, the point is that God didn’t want the people to be defenseless, but he wanted them to rely upon him and not upon chariots or horses or offensive weaponry.

And so, repeatedly throughout the history of Israel, this point is made. Psalm 20:7 says that some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. They have bowed down and fallen, but we have risen and stood upright. Very important here.

Now, I don’t think there’s any prohibition essentially for all offensive weaponry to be done away from in the land. We know that wasn’t the case. We know that spears and bows and this sort of thing were frequently used. And I think that the point here is not that a nation should have no offensive weaponry, but rather the nation that trusts in the offensive weaponry that they have in instead of in Jehovah God for protection, that nation has slipped into the idolatry of military preparedness as opposed to trusting in Jehovah for their defenses.

We certainly have secondary means that God has called us to defend our nation and to press offensive warfare as well. But the point is that to rely upon the secondary means instead of the primary means of God himself and his providence for defense is to fall into idolatry. And chariots and horses were frequently too much of temptation to men to have and not fall into that sort of sin. And so God forbad the kings from having horses and by correlation of course of having chariots as well forbidden to enter into a particular form of offensive weaponry because it was too great a temptation to slip away from understanding that Jehovah God was to be their protection.

And that’s the problem in Micah’s day in which this verse addresses. The contemporary to Micah Isaiah in 31:1 says, “Woe to those that go down to Egypt for help. and stay on horses and trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel. Neither do they seek the Lord.” It goes on to say that the Lord is wise and he’ll bring disaster upon the enemies of God.

This is the verse we read a week or two ago where it goes on to Isaiah goes on to compare God to the lion. The lion who attacks a group of sheep and no matter how many shepherds come out, the lion is not afraid. He sits and roars and does his thing. And God is compared to that lion who will come down and rescue his people. Even though all these shepherds of the other nations come against them and they don’t have horses and chariots because they don’t have alliances with Egypt anymore.

He says if you trust in me, I’ll be that roaring lion not frightened if all the nations come against you. So God calls us to rely upon him and not to rely upon her chariots and horses.

Now application today of course is quite easy to make in this specific case to rely upon on hydrogen bombs to rely upon guided missiles to rely upon mutually assured destruction for our defense instead of Jehovah God is great sin and blasphemy in God’s sight it is idolatry it’s to put something in the place of God in terms of our our defense and also in terms of the offensive weaponry here talked about mutually assured destruction says we must have offensive capability to provide deterrence and while as a may be good and fine in practice it has led in this country certainly to rec to a to a idolatrous placing of our trust and confidence in offensive weaponry instead of Jehovah God.

One other application of this that I was thinking of this week and it may not seem obvious as I make this point but I was talking to Steve Samson last night and I was floating the idea of some legislative action that we were thinking of for the next session of the legislature. One of the things we were thinking about doing is introducing a death penalty bill for murderers and senior citizens, and there was some thinking behind that in terms of why that would be a good idea.

But, you know, Steve made a real good point. He said that’s the pro that’s how we got into the situation we’re in this country today in large measure by having class legislation. Legislation that offers benefits or special privileges to a particular class of people. And in a way, why do I bring that in here? Why I bring that in here is when we talk about legislation, one of the things we’re doing is both defensive and offensive.

We’re trying to roll back spiritual darkness. We’re trying to establish that the death penalty is a good thing for those who murdered or who do the things that God’s law says are to be subjected to capital punishment. But if we turn and use the warfare of those people that have rebelled against God, if we try to use their methods and means, we then are almost like these men who had turned to the horses and chariots instead of Jehovah God for his defense of the people.

It’s as if we had for instance been surrounded by a group of people as Israel was frequently who had great standing armies and we say, “Well, they have standing armies. We should have standing armies.” And yet God says, “No, you have national you have a national guard. You have your men trained to shoot.” Now, there may be differences of applying that in our day and age, but the point is this. We don’t want to use the enemy’s weapons when those weapons are illicit to God.

And indeed, the idea of class legislation should probably be strongly reconsidered in light of what Steve Samson mentioned to me.

Okay. But it isn’t just defensive weaponry that can be idolatrous to the people. It is offensive or offensive weaponry rather is also defensive armaments. The second half of this couplet refers to the cities and strongholds. He says he will cut off your cities and throw down the strongholds.

And here again it may not be obvious from the text cities here the specific term used are generally identified not as a political entity. The Greek idea of the polis metropolitan palace you know what I mean? The Greek idea of the city was a political entity. The Old Testament. The Old Testament idea and the idea behind this specific term in terms of a city is not a political entity or a geographic location even.

It is a walled protected area. And so cities were identified as those that had walls. And frequently they would have communities around them that were unwalled, but those were referred to as villages and not as cities. And so when he says here that he’ll cut off the cities, he’s talking about the walled fortified structures. He goes on to give that more emphasis of course. And he says, I’ll throw down your strongholds and so these are defensive armaments whereas horses and chariots are used for offensive weaponry or for deterrence the city now and the fortified structures are defenses instead of being like hydrogen bombs and guided missiles these are more like bomb shelters okay or maybe these are more like high frontier star wars whatever you want to call it and to trust in those sorts of defensive weaponry or defensive armaments rather that may be available to us instead of in Jehovah God is again an idolatry.

Now, this idea of walled cities and strongholds also has a long history in the history of the covenant people throughout the Old Testament. The spies who brought back the evil report and said, “We don’t want to go into that land that God has told us to go into were afraid of going in there.” One of the things they said they were specifically afraid was is that their cities there were strong and fortified.

They had these strongholds of cities. They failed to act in faith to God who had just brought them out of as we said before the mightiest empire of the known world Egypt at that time they said oh no they got strong cities we don’t want to go in here again they were exhorted to trust in God for their defense.

Numbers 1:7 says that the Lord is good and that the Lord is a stronghold in the day of trouble you see the defense is not to be found ultimately in the secondary means again but in the primary means of Jehovah God coming to the defense of his people and so God is him who will protect those who know him that trust in him so.

And here it is idolatry to move in terms of reliance upon the secondary means that God may well have us develop in terms of defense of armament defense of armaments. But it is sin and idolatry to rely upon those things for our defense instead of Yahweh instead of the covenant God of his people. And so today as I said Star Wars or high frontier can be idolatrous to us. We have to recognize that.

Now I titled this particular section not just the idolatry of milit of the military but of the military state. And I think it’s very important to recognize here that the offensive and defensive things we’ve just talked about were the production of a civil state. They were not primarily the production of individual people. And so today it’s the same thing. uh high frontier nuclear weaponry guided missiles are the production of the civil state and as well as striking at the idolatry here of relying upon other things other than God for our defense and for our offensive weaponry as well. I think also implicit behind these two couplets is the idea that to rely upon the state for salvation is also a great idolatry.

And of course that’s the situation we find ourselves increasingly in America. I mean it’s just so obvious. I probably don’t have to spend much time on this but it’s important to recognize that behind these military idols as it were as a civil state that provides these things for its people and therefore calls people to worship it instead of God. as on one of the recent calced videotapes that we’ve got in now and we’re going to be making copies of those and let people start checking them out.

But John Leithart is talking about this idea the civil state is a messianic reality and he said that he watched the news after the stock market crash last year and they were saying about how everybody on the market were in disarray and confusion and they all looked to Washington for an answer. But there was confusion there too. You see, when we have natural disasters, when we have economic disasters, when we have political disasters, when we have potential military disasters, people don’t turn first and foremost to God in prayer and confession of sins and repentance.

People of our country look to Washington, look to the civil government for salvation, for answers to these problems. And so behind these things is the idea that the civil state will provide salvation for its people.

Now, it’s interesting, of course, that God brought this home in spades, as it were, to his people in the particular historic situation we’re talking about in this book of Micah. Remember, we said before and Sennacherib’s march to Jerusalem that he destroyed 46 strongwalled cities, strongholds, fortified cities. And so, God says, “I’m going to remove that idol from my people.” And he did it. He brought in Sennacherib to rip down these fortified cities so the people who no longer trust in them, but realize they have to trust in the covenant God of Israel.

By the way, one other thing that’s kind of interesting from the specific words used here in verse one where he says that he’ll destroy chariots. that word in the Hebrew is abad. And you remember a couple weeks ago we were talking about Satan and his work and his who he is. in the book of Revelation, Satan is referred to as Abdon, the destroyer. That’s a transliteration of the Hebrew word. And the root of abdon is abed, which means to destroy. And so God says he’ll destroy the chariots. And he’ll wreck these strong uh fortified cities. And he does that through these secondary means.

He does it did in the time of Micah through Sennacherib. He may do it today in the United States through all kinds of secondary means that we can begin to see on the horizon. But it’s important to recognize here that Satan is used by God as it were as the destroyer to destroy those false idols that we’ve constructed in our mind to cause us to rely upon God.

Now, in terms of application, if we understand that the primary thing that this is all pointing to is the conversion of men and nations through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That in Romans 1, we’ve stated many times that the gospel is the power, the dynamite of God, the offensive weaponry as it were. And so what it means is that as you go forward preaching that gospel in all of its implications, you’re not to rely upon the secondary means that God may or may not provide to you. And what that means is this, that if you don’t think you’re a skilled orator, or if you don’t think you understand Vantillian presuppositional apologetics, epistemology in an epistemological self-conscious fashion yet, or maybe You don’t even know what I’m talking about right now.

It doesn’t make any difference. Ultimately, God says that you are to proclaim the fact that Jesus Christ died for sinners and that he rose that men might have salvation in him and no other and that men are called to come into obedience to that truth. That they’re that they are God’s possession. They’re his creation, created for his purpose. And so, you’re supposed to do that and you’re not supposed to wait until God gives you all the hydrogen bombs of Vantillian presuppositionalism.

you’re supposed to go forward preaching what the gospel is and its implications for whatever you’re doing in your life that you’ve been brought to the understanding of. Paul said specifically that he didn’t go forward in skilled oratory that with great fluidity of speech or something. He said no because then people might think that it’s my particular ability to orate and preach and everything else that are bringing people to God.

But instead God uses the foolishness of men. He uses their off time times struggling, sometimes a faltering method and still proclaiming who Jesus Christ is and the crown rights of Jesus over every area of life. So if you in this congregation are waiting around till you fully understand these things, don’t go out proclaim Jesus Christ in whatever sphere you’re called to do to your friends, to your fellow employees, and in all things.

Additionally, of course, this means that if we’re going into a time of tremendous judgment in our nation that will also primarily start at the church and then work itself outward. That as we have these problems coming upon us in our nation and we don’t have necessarily the secondary means in place yet that we’re striving to in obedience to God’s commands and that’s important to recognize. But still if for instance you have become convinced 6 months ago that you should provide dowy for your wife to provide.

You’ve repented of your failure to do that then you have no reason to fear ultimately now that you’re untimely death or other catastrophe will somehow mean that you’re without defense. You’re supposed to be relying upon God and upon the God who is in covenant faithfulness to his people who walk covenantally obedient to him for their defense. So both in terms of our offense and defense, we rely upon God.

Now that’s the first idol, military statism. Secondly, there’s removal of the idolatry of false guidance and that comes in the couplet in verse 12. God says that he will cast off or cut off rather witchcrafts and you’ll have no more soothsayers in your midst.

Now the term here for witchcraft means those who would seek to discover, disclose, reveal or conjure. Frequently witches apparently from a reference in Ezekiel for instance were poisoners. They were in essence manipulators of men. They were trying to who have their will be done in other people’s lives frequently through conjuring or through occultic practices or through drugs. And so the witches are those who would manipulate others. They are those who have the idolatry of false guidance for others and seek to delude others in their walk.

Soothsayers on the other hand are primarily information sources and that’s seen in several verses of the scriptures. Calvin said that the word for soothsayer here really could be translated astrologers or jugglers or fortune tellers. And I’m not sure what he meant by jugglers there. It may be I thought it’d be interesting to look up where the modern practice of juggling came from. Perhaps it was some means of fortelling the future depending on which ball dropped. I don’t know. But in any event, astrologers, fortune tellers, these people are information conduits for people.

And so they’re systems of false guidance. The word for soothsayer there actually has its origin apparently in the word for cloud. And so this has caused a great deal of speculation on perhaps they were cloud readers the way they’d be tea leaf readers today. or maybe they were looking up into the skies to watch the stars and hence Calvin saying that these may have been astrologers. And indeed astrology was of course specifically mentioned in other verses in terms of some of the false pagan practices that invaded the covenant people as well.

And remember what we said before that astrology was not then as it was now. Primarily it was an attempt to say that it’s the environment that molds the future. And so the stars and their heavenly patterns are part of that. And so if we understand the environment better, we’ll know where we’re going. It’s sort of a naturalism as opposed to recognizing we have a personal God who didn’t just start everything and walk away, but is intervening in history and bringing through his providence things to pass.

Now, it’s interesting in this connection to turn to 1 Samuel 15:23. We have here of course the removal of the kingdom from Saul by Samuel. And so Samuel says in verse 23, “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry.” Okay? So there’s a correlation here. The prophet tells us, speaking for God, between rebellion and divination. And divination, of course, is an attempt to again elicit or to obtain illicit information through other sources other than God.

It’s to seek to peer into some sort of occult practice and get information. In other words, false guidance. Now, how are these things similar? And the question is answered in the second half of that verse where he says, “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.” The root sin behind divination, rebellion, idolatry, iniquity, and insubordination is a failure to move in conformity to God’s word.

And so, soothsayers and witches are an attempt to find another word from something other than God for guidance. And so, I’ve labeled this section, as I said, the removal of the idolatry of false guidance.

It’s interesting, you know, when Dennis Peacock was here several weeks ago, we were talking about what what is the role of the Holy Spirit in communicating God’s word to us and direction and guidance in our lives? And he said, “Really, what you’re talking about is the theology of guidance.” And I suppose that’s right. I’ve never heard it called that before. But in any event, these people here, the idolatry of the covenant people were involved in was a false the theology of guidance, an attempt to either give illicit guidance to others, manipulate others, or to seek information by a source other than God. And both things have a root in the rejection of the word of the Lord.

Occultism is an attempt to manipulate men and the environments to affect our will, our decree, our providence for our purposes. It’s to make our word or attempt to make our word ultimate rather than God’s word. Kuyper and Dich and commenting on this verse from 1 Samuel say the following. Opposition to God is compared by Samuel to soothsay and oracles because idolatry was manifested in both of them. All conscious disobedience is actually idolatry because it makes self well, the human eye into a god.

So that all manifest opposition to the word and commandment of God is like idolatry, a rejection of the true God. You reject God’s word for guidance. You’ve fallen into the idolatry of having other methods of guidance.

Now, it’s important here to realize how these things may come to pass. Now, remember the situation here is that Saul is supposed to destroy the Amalekites, but he brought back the king of the Amalekites after this raid. And he also brought back some sheep and some cows. And those of us who were fortunate and blessed enough by God to know Judge Beers, he would quote this verse from 1 Samuel 15 frequently. What is low? What is this bleating of sheep in my ear? Samuel tells Saul as he comes to meet him. What’s this lowing of cows that I hear? In other words, the judge would use that of course today to say, “What is this idolatrous practices you’ve entered into here?

Why are you not obeying God’s command?” And of course, Saul being a good rationalizer and a good devout religious person didn’t say, “Well, it’s cuz I disobeyed God you hear these bleating of sheep.” No, no. He said, “Well, these are the best and we killed all the lousy sheep and cattle, but these are the best sheep and cattle. We decided we should sacrifice these to God.” So, we brought them back to sacrifice to God. Isn’t that good and religious of us?

And it’s in this context then that in verse 22, Samuel tells him, it is better to obey. Obedience is better than sacrifice. Okay. And the context means that obedience is better than illicit sacrifice. Don’t come talking to me about your great devotional aspect. Samuel tells Saul, “You broke the command of God.” God’s word has given to you said, “Destroy these things utterly. You broke the commandment. I don’t care about your lousy religious rationalizations for what you did.” It is sin. It’s rebellion. It says divination. It’s exchanging the word of God for a word from another, yourself or some other source.

And so, we have to recognize that the idolatry of false guidance will often come through me through devices that may appear outwardly very pious and very religious. And it doesn’t take too much work to see some parallels to our own day and age when people reject the law word of God in terms of a theology of guidance and instead go by their feelings or go by their emotional state or go by whatever seems right. How can it be wrong if it feels so right? go by their feelings.

It’s interesting uh that Luther was confronted with a group of enthusiasts. These were like real radical charismatics if you want to look at it that way. People who thought that in some sort of subjective way, God communicated to them directly. And so they had words from God other than God’s inspired word would frequently disobey that word in that in their supposed enthusiasm.

When they came to Luther shouting the spirit, the spirit, Luther’s response was, “I slap your spirit on the snout.” Okay. Well, it’s important to recognize that when we have theologies of guidance taught to us that come from someplace other than the revealed word of God, that is a temptation to idolatry. It’s a temptation to usurp the word of God with the word of another. No matter how religious, no matter how pious people may try to make it sound.

Now, of course, the immediate reference here is to occultic practices. And it is interesting, of course, that we’ve had a president who has been engaged in astrology to some extent. There are actually reports now that he has an astrological computer that he’s used to give some of his direction. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s certainly true that they have at least mingled in the astrology field and have changed appointments to align themselves with the stars.

And this is really again idolatry and supplanting the word of God with another word. So also when we were in Victoria, BC, we went to a real nice place called I think it’s called the Crystal Garden. A beautiful place, a place that people would go and it’s all covered with glass and there’s beautiful plants and very exotic animals in there too. And it’s really a nice place. We had English an English tea there one afternoon.

But it was interesting as you go into this place and obviously these are not, you know, drug fiends who would attend this place. These are probably upper middle class people, upper class people who go and enjoy this great environment. And they have palm readings there on a regular basis. A little sign there saying every I think Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at two o’clock there are palm readings. Well, you know, this is not some sort of little amusement of people.

people are again self-consciously moving back toward attempting to find a revelation or a word outside of themselves, but not from Yahweh, not from the God who reveals himself in the scriptures. So, we have idolatrous practices of the of guidance in our day and age today.

Bring it down to us, however, it’s I think that I was thinking about these things last night and I was thinking that, you know, it’s interesting that the church has not overtly entered into these sorts of practices really in the history of the last 2,000 years. And I think that part of that of course is that with the coming of Messiah, this removal of these idolatrous practices has been being has is in process of being worked out in terms of his people. So we don’t have maybe overt idolatrous practices within the covenant community. But it does come in another way. This theology of false guidance.

For instance, I remember a church that I first went to, a question was asked about a particular issue of theology. And the man’s response was, “Well, we at this church believe this, don’t we?”, never having studied it out for himself. The idea was, “The church says this, and therefore, that’s how we’re to be have our lives guided because the church tells us to.” And, as much as that may be personally very flattering to, person involved in preaching or teaching, it really isn’t. It really says you’ve got people out there who are allowing themselves to be guided by the word of man and who are not being the Bereans that we’re called to be.

to study the word of God for ourselves. You know, when we get to heaven and God reviews our life as it were with us and says, “Well, why didn’t you do this or why did you do that?” And if you say, “Well, Dennis said that this was wrong or Dennis said this was right.” You know, that’s not going to buy you any slack. that’s an idolatrous practice to substitute the word of Dennis or some other man for the preached word of God or the word of God rather interpreted by the Holy Spirit who teaches these things to us is wrong.

Now, you know, obviously behind That of course is that preaching and teaching is good. We can’t definitively know all bits of the word of God. And so it’s good we’re in a covenant community in which we build each other up in the faith. All I’m saying is that if you’re just coasting here and you’re just taking whatever is put out as the doctrine of the church and decided just to believe those things instead of studying these things out for yourself and being diligent to know the scriptures and apply them, well then you’re involved in a in a false theology of guidance that really is idolatrous in nature.