And there was a man of mount Ephraim, whose name was Micah. – Judges 17:1, KJV

The book of Judges is replete with the phrase “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” The man Micah of Judges 17 is a prime example.

Micah had some pretty strange ideas about worshipping God. In Judges 17:3, Micah and his mother thought it would be pleasing to The Lord to make a graven image with which to worship – a direct contradiction to the second commandment in Exodus 20:4. He felt the need to have a priest to help him worship, so he chose one of his sons, who was not even a Levite, let alone one of the sons of Aaron. Then, when a Levite did come to his house by happenstance, he paid the man to become his priest and proclaimed, “Now I know that The Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest.” (Judges 17:13, KJV) Being a Levite alone didn’t make one qualified for the priesthood. A priest also had to be in the line of Aaron, and there is no indication that this Levite was a son of Aaron.

Micah’s story is indicative of how messed up our worship of God can become if we depart from God’s Word. Micah thought he was pleasing the Lord by making graven images and by hiring “priests” that didn’t meet God’s qualifications. But his ideas were not God’s ideas, and so his worship was not worship that was pleasing to The Lord.

In a 2009 study, The Barna Research Group determined that “less than one out of every five born again adults (19%) has a biblical worldview, which is unchanged in the past 15 years.” In other words, 81% of people who claim that Jesus is the only way to Heaven and who claim to have accepted Christ as their Savior do NOT have a clear understanding of how we are to worship God, nor do they understand how we are to live for God on a day-to-day basis. In short, the vast majority of born-again believers are just like Micah: doing that which is right in their own eyes, having no clue how the Bible should govern their day-to-day life and worship.

God commands us to worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), which means we are to worship Him His way, not ours. We often invent our own methods of worship, thinking God will appreciate our efforts because we offer them to Him in sincerity. But God is not interested in our sincerity; He is interested in our obedience. He appreciates no efforts apart from the ones He has prescribed, and those prescriptions are detailed for us in His Word. Those Christians who do not possess a biblical worldview are ignorant when it comes to God’s Word, and so they fill their knowledge-gap with their own ideas and ways.

Man has been trying to worship God in his own way since Cain and Abel. If you are not in the Word, chances are you’re doing your own thing, just like Cain. If you are in the Word, chances are you’re worshipping God His way, just like Abel.

Which one of these two brothers are you more like?