Sunday, November 14, 2004 Tone 7
Apostle Philip
Kellia: Judges 18:1-13 Apostle: Acts 8:26-39 Gospel: St. Luke 10:25-37
Judges 18:1-13, especially vs. 1: "In those days there was no
king in Israel. And in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking for itself an inheritance to
dwell in; for until then no inheritance among the tribes of Israel had fallen to them." In many
respects, the age of the Judges was similar to the frontier era of North America when Europeans
came to settle. Here was a land "broad; yea, God...given...into [their] hands, a place where there
[was] no lack of anything that is in the earth" (vs. 10). And, as was the case on the North
American frontier, with "no king" and few effective layers of local government, the social
situation of the peoples in ancient Palestine was free-wheeling, lawless, and often self-justifying.
The tribe of Dan, as the present reading shows, lived this unsettled life constantly on the
defensive against the Philistine peoples who were invading Palestine from the Mediterranean sea
and settling the coastal region, the very territory allotted to the tribe of Dan by God's Prophet
Joshua (Josh. 19:40-46). It was a Danite hero, the Judge Samson (Jdg. 13:2), who spent twenty
years of mingling and fighting with these invaders, and still the conflict continued after him,
because there was no central government to support the Danites (Jdg. 18:1), and because the tribe
of Dan decided for themselves that migration was the solution to their problems.
However, the account of the Danite migration from southwestern Palestine to the far northeastern
reaches of the Promised Land provides a window for examining the question of how one may
determine when he is doing the will of God rather than patching God's Name onto his own
desires and decisions. Clearly, not all of what we call "God's will" is necessarily so.
First, the migration of the Danites illustrates the problem of avoidance, or flight from struggle
(Jdg. 18:1). When the tribes entered Palestine, God specifically declared to Joshua, "...go over
this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land which I Am giving to them, to the people of
Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you...to the Great Sea
toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory" (Josh. 1:2-4). Only because of
disobedience, because of covenanting with the inhabitants of the land, did the Lord later say, "I
will not drive them out before you; but they shall become adversaries to you, and their gods shall
be a snare for you" (Jdg. 2:3). The problems of the people (as the account of the Danite hero,
Samson, shows) resulted from "mingling," not from conflict nor from the power of the
Philistines. Running away from problems is no solution; it is a denial of God's sovereignty.
Second, the Danites sought spiritual counsel from religious leaders functioning apart from the
places of true worship ordained of God. They had already decided to scout the land and to
migrate when they consulted a Levite serving at a personal, independent shrine. The scouts asked
about the journey they had already chosen and were pursuing (Jdg. 18:5). Following the
teachings of evangelists or other ministers outside the Church is a repudiation of what the Lord
has provided - a rejection of God Himself.
Finally, when the scouts found a territory in the far northeast of the Holy Land, a settlement of
Sidonians at Laish, they saw a potential homeland for their tribe with "none to reprove - none in
the land to put them to shame for any thing" and far away from "intercourse with any man" (vs.
7, LXX trans.). It looked like a perfect paradise apart. But God does not remove us from this
world. Rather He gives us the grace to struggle within the circumstances of this life to grow
closer to Him. The peace we are to seek is not in the world, but with God. O Christ, our true
God, by the might of Thy precious and life-giving Cross, the protection of Thy Bodiless Powers,
and the prayers of all Thy Saints, have mercy upon us and save us!