How do we use religion to serve our own interests? Judges 17:1–13 is full of characters who did not set out to worship Baal; they wanted to worship the Lord. But we end up with merely a semblance of religion, and not the true substance. We see people using religion for their own interests: a mother to indulge her son; a Levite to secure a better life for himself; and Micah to secure God’s blessing by adding an appearance of orthodoxy to his pagan shrine. Doing what is right in one’s own eyes is here not so much about worshipping other gods but about worshipping the true God in the wrong ways. It is religion that seeks to control God. Yet notably, the Lord neither speaks nor acts in this narrative; he only appears in the words of Micah and his mother. He seeks no part in the religion shown here.

The passage has things to say about our hearts. We are tempted by the attractions of using religion for our own interests. We are committed to genuine worship of the Lord, but we are tempted toward impure worship, self-serving religion, which ultimately disregards God’s Word.

What about our worship? God has clearly revealed how he is to be worshipped. And if our worship is according to the scriptural picture of covenant dialogue between God and us, we say, Yes, this is good, we are honouring the Lord. He will accept and bless our worship, because we have got the form and the particulars correct.

Micah thought that blessing came from having the right religious stuff and persons. But Micah’s heart was not in it. He put his trust in the forms of worship, rather than in the God who gave instructions about those forms. Forms and rituals in worship are a good thing, so long as you do not fall to formalism and ritualism, where your heart is more fond of them than of the Lord you are called to worship! This is nothing else than impure worship, outward worship. And it is manipulative—I will give you what you want so that you can give me what I want.