February 6, 2011 (Judges 17-18)

I couldn't read today's chapters without going to a printout of the sermon by Paris Reidhead on these chapters. One of the most compelling, convicting messages I have ever heard entitled "Ten Shekels and a Shirt". It is based upon the story of Micah, who set up in his home a little altar with an idol, and when a Levite passed through the neighborhood hired him to be his personal priest for 'ten shekels, a change of clothes and his food'. But later, this priest had an opportunity to be a priest for a tribe of people and stole the idol and altar from Micah and went on his way with the tribe. This is the background for Dr. Reidhead's message. I'm going to try to summarize the high points of the sermon:

What can we call this and how will it apply to our days generation? Would I be out of line in order if I were to talk to you for a little while about utilitarian religion and expedient Christianity? And a useful God? I would like to call attention to the fact that our day is a day which the ruling philosophy is pragmatism. Pragmatism means if it works it's true. If it succeeds it's good.

The question then comes to this - what is the standard of success and by what are we going to judge our lives and our ministry? And the question that you are going to ask yourself, "Is God an end or is He a means?"  And so we've got to ask ourselves at the very outset of our ministry, and our pilgrimage, and our walk, "Are we going to be Levites who serve God for ten shekels and a shirt? Serve men in the name of God, rather than God?

The philosophy of the day has become humanism. And you could define humanism this way - humanism is a philosophical statement that declares the end of all being is the happiness of man. The reason for existence is man's happiness. Now according to humanism, salvation is simply a matter of getting all the happiness you can out of life.

John Dewey, then an American philosopher influencing education, was able to  persuade the educators that there were no absolute standards. Children shouldn't be brought to any particular standard, that the end of education was simply to allow the child to express himself and expand on what he is and find his happiness in being what he wants to be. So we had cultural lawlessness, when every man could do as seemed right in his own eyes and we had no God to rule over us. The Bible had been discounted and disallowed and disproved. God had been dethroned, He didn't exist, He had no personal relationship to individuals. Jesus Christ was either a myth or just a man, so they taught, and therefore the whole end of being was happiness. The individual would establish the standards of his happiness and interpret it.

The liberal says the end of religion is to make man happy while he's alive; and the fundamentalist says the end of religion is to make man happy when he dies.

And then the fundamentalists, along the line, are now tuning in on this same wavelength of humanism until we find something like this: "Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven! You don't want to go to that old, filthy, nasty, burning hell when there is a beautiful heaven up there! Now come to Jesus so you can go to heaven!"

Humanism is, I believe, the most deadly and disastrous of all the philosophical stenches that's crept up through the grating pit of Hell. It has penetrated so much of our religion and it is in utter and total contrast with Christianity. And here we find Micha, who wants to have a little chapel, and he wants to have a priest, and he wants to have prayer, and he wants to have devotion, because "I know the Lord will do me good." And THIS is SELFISHNESS! And THIS is SIN!

I'm afraid that it's become so subtle that it goes everywhere. What is it? In essence it's this - that this philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man has been sort of covered over with evangelical terms and Biblical doctrine until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man; Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man; all the angels exist for the happiness of man; Everything is for the happiness of man! And I submit to you that this is UNCHRISTIAN! Isn't man happy? Didn't God intend to make man happy? Yes - but as a by product and not a prime-product!



My eyes were opened. I was no longer working for Micah and ten shekels and a shirt. But I was serving a living God. Let me summarize - Humanism says, 'the end of all being is the happiness of man.' Christianity says, 'the end of all being is the glory of God'.

And that's only half the message summarized. I'll stop there. But it's well worth it to actually listen to the message online - a google search will pull it up.