Israel – From Golden Age to Desolation

Transcript

good morning

and

thank you for your prayer brother rich

so brother rich and his prayer alluded to what i had

wanted to talk about for the next month and it kind of ruins my opening but that's okay rich i'll forgive you

can't thank me

no

you're all over so

there we go so there's my opening and i was going to use a a jim sullivan comedy line here saying i was going to pick up where rich left off and talk about

present-day israel activities in food and if you look up there um

candy bars not so much anymore but banana splits i love banana splits

and then you can see some of the other things up there there's anyone off the top of their head and hopefully this came real quick to you what all these images have in common

you have a 710 split in bowling which i got many at times i just said the word so you should know it by now

split so we're going to be talking about split or the act of splitting up and when you usually think of that it's not at least to me anyhow not normally a positive thing when you think of splitting up you think of couples splitting up you know that's not a pleasant thing you know this ballerina that might be pleasant to her but to me that would be deadly you know i wouldn't like that at all the 710 split i don't like that when i used to bowl

you know the time i think the make on that is all of five percent maybe

and of course the top one is something you never want to see an oil tanker splitting in the middle of the ocean um the other ones banana split i'm good with that one uh candy bar i think would be 50 50.

you know if i had the whole candy bar to myself and then had to share it with my dad he might be happy because he went from nothing to half of something and i'm giving up half so i might be a little bummed out unless i'm a nice giver then i'm happy to share so that's kind of 50 50. and of course what we'll be talking about

this really followed up on my classes on solomon

was what happened after solomon

let's just keep go let's go keep going pushing forward on what happened to the nation of israel after solomon so uh lord willing that's what we'll be talking about the next few weeks um to do that i'm gonna do a little recap today

uh not a leak cap this will be a mark cap uh we're gonna do a recap just because it's been a year since i was last up here and not that i'm doubting that you remembered everything we talked about with solomon or that you remembered everything rich talked about with saul or steve talked about with david but a little refresher might help us out and set the mood

for the rest of our classes on the kings so let's do that if you don't mind

so if you remember back in samuel first samuel chapter eight

you know you'll remember these words and as soon as i say them but you remember the people came to samuel and basically said samuel

you'll be you're an old man

you know you don't have much longer to be here with us and lead us and guide us and your sons

forget them you know your sons are crooked

they take bribes they're not nice guys

and what are the famous words that the people say the same we want a king

we want a king like the other nations to lead us

and you remember the response from samuel he was angry right

he was angry but you remember god's response

and you can really if you read the words in first samuel eight of the lord to samuel

feel the pain

that god must have felt as he tells samuel this and you all know the words you've read them many times

the lord said to samuel hawking under the voice of the people and all that they say unto thee

for they have not rejected you

but they have rejected me

god's children

the nation that he had put together to be a witness to the world

to declare his righteousness to the nations around them

rejected

they wanted to be like the nations around them

totally

different than what god had planned

can you imagine as a parent

feeling rejection from your children

how god must have felt

and you know he felt it

that rejection it must have been a tough thing but god said let them have their king

and god earlier

and i put it up here on our first slide

some three to four hundred years before

this time had foretold that the nation his people would want a king

he knew it was going to happen he knew the heart of his people

and let's take a look at this because we touched upon this with the solomon class but i don't think i really did it justice until i've looked at it a little bit more and if you look at it and it's in deuteronomy 17 but i have most of it up here so you don't need to turn it up unless you want to but look what what god says

verse 15

whoever the people desired as a king had to be endorsed by yahweh

he had to endorse it we know solomon was and we'll look at that a little bit david was

because it was god's kingdom wasn't it it was god's kingdom and the people had lost sight of that

and he must be a true israelite born of israelitis parents

secondly

and we looked at this with solomon the king must not multiply horses or weapons will lead the people back to egypt

why not multiply horses what's wrong with horses i love horses i don't own any never ridden on one i'd like to i've been told i'm kind of big to ride a horse rich i know you were thinking

have you

well why in the book of job tells us that horses are considered proud animals they love to fight they love war

so multiplying horses back in those days is rich probably covered in one of his classes those were used as in wartime

so when you multiplied horses you were in fact building up your armies

for your self-protection thus

not depending on god for your protection

in the case of solomon he bought up more and more horses for trade for monetary value

for his own benefit

don't go back to egypt what did egypt represent

to the people of israel

sin yeah dad

yeah brother gordon said sin lust of the flesh

pride of life

they sacrifice to more gods and you can probably count

didn't want his people going back there

number three

kings shall not multiply wives the wives will tend to turn you on i'm sorry ladies but the wives would turn the king away from his true love which should be god

and we we see that with solemn and a hundredfold don't we

king must not accumulate silver and gold

well david accumulated silver and gold but there's a difference you know the parable of jesus it's it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than for a camel to go through an eye of the needle

doesn't mean that having wealth in itself is a horrible thing it's what you do with that wealth

what the purpose of that wealth is in your life are you hoarding money and laying it up in barns for accumulation of wealth or using it to good

david used it to good it wasn't for himself it was for the building of the temple he laid all this aside and prepared it for solomon so solomon could come in and finish the work david set the foundation

he did all the fighting he cleared the land of the enemies he started setting up the the the goods and the money needed to build he prepared it for his son

so having wealth and among itself is not a horrible thing and solomon as we know

god gave solomon wealth didn't he

but at some point solomon took it too far

and we'll see that a little bit as well

and this is the last point and i again i touched on it

in our first classes

with solomon uh number five

and this one

i didn't give it enough credence i don't think and i don't think i digested it enough really either at the time but

i'm gonna actually read this from the account in deuteronomy 17.

and this is what it says

and it shall be when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom

that he shall write him a copy of this law

in a book

out of that which is before the priest the levites

and it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life

that he may learn to fear the lord his god to keep all the words of this law in those statutes to do them

that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren and that he turned not aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom he and his children in the midst of israel

the new king was supposed to write down the words of the law the words of deuteronomy

not only was he his father like if my dad were king and he wrote the words it wasn't that dad could just pass them down to me i had to write them for myself

and i'm trying to equate what that would be like for us today i mean we can talk about bible study marking your bibles and and doing that kind of stuff but the thing that kind of gets closer for me is when i was a child doing multiplication tables

we used to and i don't think they do this anymore you can correct me if i'm wrong but we used to have to go home at night and on a sheet of paper write our our four our four times tables

one times four is four two times four is eight three times four is twelve and we had to write them over and over again

that's how i learned multiplication i don't know if they do that today but over and over repetition

you learn how to do something and it never leaves you

that's one of the few things i'm i can do is numbers i'm pretty good with numbers and that's probably a big reason why and that's what god wanted for miss king

write down the law read the law study the law

pass it down to your children

pass it down to the people and we know that the law that moses wrote when it was given to the levites

all right they were to read it to the people i think it was every seven years

to remind the people of all that god has done for him his laws and commandments so that they could be witnesses to him of his righteousness

and the kings were supposed to do these things and it's not something you you there are instances where you you hear about it again in scripture

but more times than not there's silence when it comes to this and probably because as rich said in his prayer most of the kings didn't do right in the eyes of the lord

you know i think of saul

my guess and again i don't know i don't think it's in scripture but he probably started off writing out his copies of the law as he was supposed to do but did he end up that way

i can't imagine he did

you know think of times in your lives brothers and sisters you know the times we we're we're like this you know when we're up here and we're feeling great we're doing our readings we're studying we're feeling good we're doing classes and just everything seems to be great and then there are times when we're spiritually low when we're not reading

things get in the way well i don't have time for that today i'll do it some other time

you know god wanted his kings

you know they were shepherds to the people

god's athleisure they were shepherds and they needed to have these things forefront in their minds and not their own personal gain

make sense any questions thoughts

so again that's go ahead rich

uh was supposed to write down this stuff uh write down the law and so i i think this is an example of the jewish people putting um you know very strong emphasis on reading and writing and um you know thankfully

that allowed the law and the old testament to continue on because they were always writing it down so the jewish religion is really based upon reading and writing right and that's i think that's one of the reasons why they uh you know education is very important i want to make generalizations but education is very important even today to uh to jewish people they put an emphasis on that and i think it was true here and this is kind of where i think this started from was the reading and writing of the law you needed to not only read it but also write it and very a lot of times kings during this time didn't even know how to read or write right they they had to you know the scribes had to do all of this stuff and i was just gonna say yeah so yeah you see the pictures you know the scribes doing all the all the writing but that's how how important it was for god to keep it the kings focused so let's remember that as we go through our study for the next few weeks you know as we see the different temperaments and and changes and of these kings and how they are in relationship to god you know at the times with you know they may or may not be writing down the law and following god's commandment and not that we're judging them because as i said there are times in our lives i'm sure

when we all are at the same point where we're not doing the things that god wants us to be doing

and the key point is can we have someone kick us in the butt can we figure it out on our own can we pray on it look for help and turn it around uh some of these kings most of these kings couldn't do that they would didn't want to do it so let's remember i thought this was a key point for us as we go on in our study

so i like i said i'm not going to try to

you know summarize

brother rich's class on saul or brother steve's class on king david so what i did is came up with one slide and i thought it summarizes both kings very well all right the first two kings of the nation of israel and

brothers lg sergeant who i found out was editor of the christadelphian back in the 60s

uh wrote a book called teaching of the master and he has a couple of quotes that i pulled from him regarding these two kings

if you look at the one at saul and we know through rich's classes you know how well he started off but he became a tragic figure and this is what uh brother sergeant says about saul he says saul was the story of a man who by worldly standards was not irreligious but who was lacking in the faith which would make the word of god a living reality in his life

weakness and trust had in him its retribution the ground of trust in god was removed and as a result rebellion against the divine judgment finds an outlet in the murderous pursuit of david and stubbornness

leads at last to the seeking of consolation in the witchcraft which stands an antithesis to the god who has forsaken him

and in david he speaks in beautiful contrast to saul was the forefather of the lord whose faith was as true as a sheep in its shepherd and who in spite of one great sin remained in his contrition the man after god's own heart

david is the most profoundly god-conscious man in the old testament and i thought these summed up both those kings very well and as we got to david you know as we said he he built up he did the dirty work laying to the foundation of of solomon taking over and leading israel into that golden age that we spoke of um back in our classes a year ago and the impact of david's life on solomon you know if you think of a king that was writing down the law

and reading it and taking it to heart it had to be it had to be king david because you look at the times

we read in either first chronicles of first kings how he's trying to raise up solomon to depend on the lord to fear the lord uh to do the will of the lord to respect the lord to you know everything which was toward the lord accept the lord love the lord

count on the lord for guidance he'll be there for you and he does this over and over and right in first kings itself

i'm going to do a little snippet of reading on his charge to solomon

as he's preparing to die david says the following

be thou strong therefore and show thyself a man keep the charge of the lord thy god to walk in his ways to keep his statutes and his commandments in his judgments and his testimonies

as it is written in the law of moses

that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest and whithersoever thou turnest thyself that the lord may continue his word which he spake concerning me saying if thy children take heed to their way to walk before me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul they shall not fail thee said he a man on the throne of israel

those words tell me that david was writing copying the law he was teaching it to his children

at least to solomon

the word of god and he wanted solomon to continue in that way

so now we're going to get to solomon and i know we did classes on it but i think we're going to do a quick recap of solomon and we're going to look at the consequences of what happened with to solomon and then next week we'll start our fascinating i i think it's fascinating uh look at the first two kings of the split kingdom rehoboam and jeroboam you know sometimes when you get to the kings and i'm as guilty as probably anybody you just read it for the sake of reading it you know the kings can be you know there's names

okay but the kings can be a little tedious sometimes to read you know you may think what does this have to do with me today

well they're in here because god this is the early ecclesia

god's people and we can get lessons from reading on these kings and how they handled situations good or bad and apply them to our lives so let's take a look any questions comments before

we move on

good and again this is all stuff we covered so i'll try to go through it fairly quickly but i think again we need to get

we need to remember the background of why we're doing this

because my hope in these classes is to cover 60 years after solomon

60 years after solomon takes us to king ahab

king ahab was one of the the worst most evil kings

in in jewish history 60 years and the downfall of the nation was so great that god had to call seemingly out of nowhere elijah

to to teach and to speak to his people

60 years that's my life

and just look and not to get off on a tangent but look at our country today

if you think of it now when that and this is the same with solomon's kingdom when economic times are great and people are prosperous

usually a lot of the underlying rifts stay

suppressed you don't hear about it when things start getting tough all of a sudden there's divisions

you know this group is against this group which is against this group divisions and we see that in our country unfortunately a lot of division

and it's the same here with solomon's kingdom as great as the golden age was

we can't be fooled because there was underlying division but things were so good it just stayed suppressed

it stayed away

but as soon as that crack instincts aren't good that's when all that stuff starts bubbling back up and we see that with solomon as well but it started so great didn't it for solomon and what i want to look at real quick is something i didn't cover a lot in our classes that in each stage of solomon's life he was worn by god

he was issued three warnings in his life by god and we want to i want to look at those real quick and we'll go through some of this other stuff quickly because it's stuff you know we know and we've already covered but in his early life you know he he really had a zeal it's like you relate it to baptism

you know those first i don't know month two months three months four months

you can't get much higher or feel much better about yourself

and then all of a sudden you do something wrong

and you start

you know and solomon started off so great didn't he i mean you remember his prayer for that understanding heart that he asked god for

understanding heart not only to

be there for the people to understand their situations and to have a loving heart open to them to understand and appreciate god's word and what god wanted him to do

that's what he asked for an understanding heart

wisdom in in in looking at god's word and in figuring out what was the right thing to do and we know god gave that to him and much more he gave him everything he didn't ask for the wealth and everything else

and then we read in first chronicles 29

about

the royal majesty that solomon had that no other king had and will have until the time of christ

you know he was magnified and he reached heights that no other king would

we read about the prosperity and the peace in the land

every man sitting under his own fig tree

things were good things were very good he built the temple

he was outwardly in everything he did looking for ways to glorify god

to show the nations around him that god was active in their lives and this is what things can be like for you too if if yahweh is your god if you follow god with all your heart and all your mind and solomon was doing that he brought the people together

to build the temple and to work on other projects it was really the time of his purest and loftiest goals everything was done to glorify god and then we get to first kings chapter three

and god issues his first warning to solomon in first kings chapter three

and this is what that warning entails first kings chapter 3

well that's verse 3 i think is a great place to start because it says solomon loved the lord walking in the statutes of david his father

so everything david had done in his life to prepare solomon solomon had carried it over and let's say the train was continuing to roll down the tracks everything was good

but then we get to verse 14 and god tells solomon

look solomon if you will walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my commandments as thy father david then walk then i will lengthen thy days

he'll lengthen his days he'll give him prolonged life

now you might say brother mark that's not a warning well it is because the opposite would be true

implied if you don't

then your days will be shortened

and unfortunately for solomon his days were shortened i think he he only lived to about 60

years old

so that's the first warning to solomon

from god

and then in the middle of his life

he really he really cranks it up he finishes the temple

and then he has a decision to be made if you remember we talked about how great solomon was at infrastructure

at getting people together for building projects

roads bridges storehouses you name it barns for the solomon was great at that stuff he was good at at putting people and groups together the best people you know if he wanted someone to begin a business for you today he would be a man you would want you know my boss always says

you know i only hire the best of the best don't know why i'm there but that's what he says

and that's what solomon did he wanted the best person for the best

role and that's what he did in everything you know structure solomon was all about that but he had a choice to make after the the building of the temple you know he could slow down

and concentrate on other things

you know maybe he noticed his spiritual life was a little lacking his families was a little lacking

i don't know or

you know i built this powerful machine

i might as well keep going and build more and more things

and this is where

things start to change

you know the account seems all of a sudden late in his life all these things started happening it's usually a gradual build up in one's life doesn't it it's not usually like that

that you oh i stopped coming to church i'm not interested anymore you know like that it's usually a gradual build up but i think if this was the case with solomon um

you know he was a wise he was getting on top of his game

he kept building and building and building and and things were well things were well and and in this case we see the second warning given to god and this warning um

there's a little more a little more meat on it than just i will lengthen thy days or shorten thy days in chapter 9

god says this to solomon

regarding

the second warning and it's in verse 6.

if ye shall at all turn from following me ye or your children

it will not keep my commandments and my statutes which i have set before you but go and serve other gods and worship them

then will i cut off israel

so now it's not just you solomon

but your actions

have consequences for israel

i will cut off israel out of the land which i have given them in this house which i have hallowed for my name

will i cast out of my sight

and israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people

and at this house which is high everyone that passeth by it shall be astonished and shall hiss and they shall say why hath the lord done thus unto this land

into this house

that's pretty severe that is pressure

solomon we're not talking just you you're the shepherd you're the king of my people

this is what i expect from you

and we know what happened there as well but god warned him he gave him warning that he would cast off not just him but israel

so we get to later in his life

um and by this time solomon is is a driven man he just can't stop

building it it was like uh you know

like a drug that's the only thing i can think of it was something he craved

it engulfed his life the more and more wealth he accumulated the more and more effort he needed to put to keep it

he levied heavier taxes on the people he made their work more burdensome in accomplishing all these building projects he started to change you remember we talked and i don't think i have it here but the deal he made with hiram

hyrum was to supply him ships

solomon would supply him cities

hyrum upheld his bargain

and for the first time i think here we get a real crack in solomon's armor where he basically tries to shortchange hiram he gives him undesirable cities remember hyrum complains to him and says solomon nothing for nothing but you know like you got a fleet of ships now you could travel the world and trade and you're going to make all this money and this is what you're giving me in return

on a gentleman's agreement

hiram ended up taking it he ended up being the bigger man in the situation but you could see

the greed part with solomon he just wanted more and more and it started eating into his life and eating into his personality and eating into who he was

he was changing him and we we sell that with hiram um chapter 10 you know it talks about all the the things he accumulated

he had an ivory throne and gold drinking vessels and he gathered more chariots and horses we talked about what those represent

he brought them out of egypt

he made silver to be in jerusalem like stones

he built a house for himself a palace

took twice as long to build as the temple

and i mentioned this in our class the house that david had was only 40 to 50

years old

couldn't have lived in that house nowadays if someone offered me a 40 to 50 year old house i'd take it i'd live in it

solomon needed a palace a splendid palace

um and this is an important thing to remember as he gets later in his life that the tax that was levied he kept that tax and we laugh about that nowadays right when the government comes out and issues well this is a temporary tax for this this or that it's never temporary it's always there you know the high food prices you know i'm in the food industry and and people come to me mark when is this you know

it might prices may settle back but do you think some of these chains are going to cut back on their prices when they can get what they're getting

the markup on food is pretty good

some of the some of the products are 30

percent some are as high as 50.

so it's hard for those companies to give that back when they know they can get it joanne and i went food shopping [Music] yesterday yesterday morning i remember when it was just the two of us before children our food bill was 50

a week

now it's basically still just the two of us with elizabeth there when she wants to be

170 dollars

and i looked at what we got and i'm like honey what did we get

you know it's just incredible and it's the same here with solomon

you know i well i told you this would be a temple tax but

you know we're going to keep this going we got to feed the engine

if we want to keep this wealth and prosperity this is what it takes

and that's what he wanted to do

for himself

he wanted to keep that engine going so that's an important part when we get into

uh the split

of what caused the downfall

you know we say during good times the underlying dissension kind of hides itself because everyone's happy but as soon as things start falling apart some of that stuff starts sprinkling up to the top again and that's what we're going to find out that happens

and then we get to the famous chapter 11

in in that really hammers home solomon's downfall don't we uh the strange women uh many of whom he married for political alliances which were popular in those days i think rich covered that one of his classes you know to make alliances with countries it was it was practiced that the king or the king's son or someone would marry the princess or the queen or the other country and that would solidify an alliance and he had more alliances with other nations than

you know and they weren't for the glory of god

he wasn't they weren't being witnesses to god after the queen of sheba queen of sheba left solomon and she saw all the glory

of god in everything but solomon went above and beyond that and unfortunately these many strange wives turned his heart away and we read we talked about the horrific incident in in first kings 11 that many times you can overlook if you read it quickly

of the account where he he builds the shrines

on the mount of olives

he builds shrines on the mount of olives uh verse eight solomon did evil in the sight of the lord and went not fully after the lord is did david his father

so at this time i can't imagine solomon's writing his

his law notes he's not copying the law anymore he's not reading it is he teaching it to his children

probably not

i mean it doesn't say but you know if he's not following the lord with all his heart i'm sure that's a big part of it solomon built a high place for chimash the abomination of moab in the hill that is before jerusalem the mount of olives and for molech the abomination of the children of ammon

and likewise did he for all his strange wives which burnt incense and sacrifice under their gods

he was jeroboam before jeroboam

and we tend to forget that

you know we solomon was great wisest man in the land but he turned away from god and he did more than turn away he he did some abominable things and it affected not only himself

affected the whole nation didn't it

affected the whole nation and it would be some 400 years

before those shrines would come down king josiah would take them down that's a long time

it's a long time

he receives his third warning here in first kings chapter 11 and it i guess you can call it a warning but right it's more of a verdict

after all that had happened

um we read in verse nine lord was angry with solomon because his heart was turned from the lord god of israel which appeared unto him twice and it commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods

but he kept not that which the lord

commanded

just it's like a total cut off

you know we can sit here and we could say boy that would never happen to me

and i think of it and it just

there's no way

right

but unfortunately we've seen it

we've seen brothers and sisters just

inexplicably

walk away

so it can happen to us

but we can

plenty of safeguards for it not happening being here is one riding the law in our hearts reading praying

asking god for that strength for it not to happen to us or our loved ones or or our family that's why we do those things that's why we need to do those things we need to keep being fed so that other stuff the stuff that solomon went through doesn't take over our lives

verse 11

the lord said unto solomon for as much as this has done of thee and thou has not kept my covenant in my statutes which i have commanded thee i will rend the kingdom from thee and will give it to thy servant

notwithstanding in thy days i will not do it for david thy father's sake and how many times when we read further on in the account of the kings do we read about those words for david's sake

the respect the love that god had for david

played a key role

in a lot of what god didn't do

he kept his covenant he wanted to keep his covenant but i will render it out of the hand of thy son

howbeit i will not rent it away all the kingdom but will give one tribe to thy son for david my servant's sake there it is again and for jerusalem's sake which i have chosen and as we continue in this chapter we read of these i talked about old

foes things bubbling up and right away here in this chapter we're told of three three men

who make an appearance and the first one

is

king uh hey dad the edomite and i won't read it but basically hey dad

was a child at the time david and joab if you remember the account of david and joab in this the slaughter

of the

haydad was there he saw it he lived through it as a child he escaped it

and he fled and he ended up in egypt and to make a long story short much like joseph he found favor with pharaoh

and pharaoh gave him his sister's wife he gave him you know land he gave him things and he was he was living quite well in egypt

but something was burning inside a hate ad for what david what he perceived as wrong by david and joab and when david and joab died haydad asked pharaoh i want to go back i want to go back to israel

and he would become a thorn in the side of solomon

that was adversary number one and if i'm not mistaken uh edom is to the southwest of israel south i think

southeast thank you brother now the next gentleman who we're told on is resin and he comes from syria which is from the north right rich

he comes from the north

and he causes trouble

for solomon and most a lot of historians say that hey dad and resident might have worked together in some things we're not exactly told what he does to solomon but he was a thorn in his side as well so you have the north you have the south

so all of a sudden all this nice and quiet peace from your enemies is gone

it's gone

and then finally right in the middle

god sets up one more adversary and that adversary would be jeroboam

and jeroboam started

as one of solomon's workers if you look at the account because sometimes we for we don't look at it we think of jeroboam well he got the 10

tribes and he caused israel to sin which he does

but he had a life before that and we're told in a brief snippet of what he did

all right jeroboam the son of nebat an ephrathite a zoraida solomon's servant

uh his mother's name was zariah a widowed woman even he lifted up his hand against the king so where does it say oh the man jeroboam was a mighty man of valor

and solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious remember we talked about how solomon was able to find talented people

and put them to work where they best fit and he did that with jeroboam

jeroboam would become overseer ruler over the charge of the house of joseph

the tribes of ephraim and manasseh those workers were

jeroboam oversaw them

so he worked he was side by side i don't want to say task master but i guess he was kind of that he was their overseer making sure they were doing what they were supposed to do he was in charge

and what do you think we talked about the taxes not being lifted the work being

more stringent as solomon wanted to build more and more what do you think jeroboam heard from those people

were they happy

complaints yeah sharon complaints

he overheard everything

and he was going to try to use it to his

advantage so now we have solomon

this is his life just totally in his later years falling apart

he's has issues to his south he's has issues to the north

he's going to have one more issue right in the heart right in the nation of israel itself in jeroboam

all by the the hand of god

controlling these situations

and what we'll do starting next week is we'll look at

we'll look at you know from the time of solomon's death we'll look at rehoboam and jeroboam because there's a lot there and we'll continue in my my hope is that we get we'll get to the time of ahab in the time of elijah

and we'll we'll get that far 60 years

it's amazing what can happen in 60 years

you know i think of of present day with technology you know you think of certain technologies that 20 years ago weren't around 30 years 40

years the technology from early 1900s today how much it's changed

and how much something like this you know can change and i want to leave you we we looked at ecclesiastes

as the book of solomon's prayer for forgiveness in his old age that he repented and one thing solomon says and i'm not sure if we covered this but i i think it's so

noteworthy to we'll conclude with these words

in chapter 9 verse 18.

this is what solomon says he says wisdom is better than weapons of war

now these are the words i want you to remember for our next class

but one sinner

destroyeth

much good

solomon

coming to realization that what he did what he became in his later life

destroyed much good not only for himself but for israel for the nation and we're going to see

how this

how this plays out in our next class

any questions thoughts comments

go dad nope can you pass that there thanks oh dad right behind you the mic

we want to hear you pop yeah there you go on the microphone sir

thank you whoa you know

so many of the kings of israel neglected god's instructions to read and copy the law

but jesus as king would have followed those instructions to the letter to the point that he would have memorized the law

he would have memorized it right so

for us

the instruction is to constantly

read god's word to

constantly take those thoughts and the words of our lord into our minds and our hearts so that we

have unm always with us and not forget

what is right and profit to do right

right

right he was the only one wasn't he yeah he was the only one

and we

the lord

the psalms the prophets he would have known all those things he came to fulfill it yesterday and he did he fulfilled it and we humbly how often did he said have he not read how is it written in the law right so he knew

what he was talking about right thanks dad

anyone else

yeah rich

you mentioned hey dad and jeroboam uh hey dad went down to egypt as you said i believe jeroboam went down to egypt as well i think you're gonna actually get into it okay okay i just think i'll just leave you with this i think it's very interesting the role that egypt plays in all of this you know you can see some of the big political uh political issues that are going on here underneath the surface to try to gain mastery of that area right so yeah that's it yeah the role of egypt in the history of israel is you know what it's been used for for for good for the children of israel and for bad is is it's those are the classes on their own you could do a lot of classes on that so good point and we'll touch on that next week when we we look closely at jeroboam

Transcript

so last week

we ended up

um meeting

jeroboam

there we go it's a good start um we ended up after solomon's apostasy in in first kings 11.

we learned good afternoon miss elizabeth hampton welcome

we we learned that god sent adversaries against solomon and israel

haydad rezan and the last one was jeroboam

and we said that jeroboam was a little different from the other two the other two were outside forces sent against solomon

jeroboam would come from within right from the heart so to speak of israel jeroboam would become an adversary not only to solomon but for the whole land of israel

but before in this it's so interesting because i i must be a horrible reader of scripture i really must be because a lot of things i don't notice until you have to do a class or a study it's amazing i mean when you think of jeroboam

the first word you think causes real descent that's that's it i mean there's no redeeming qualities about jeroboam at all but it's not the case here at the beginning of this the tale so to speak we find that there are some qualities that

people liked and that god actually liked about jeroboam so let's look at those really quick because

you know it's amazing because you just think jeroboam sinner from day one you know caused israel to sin bad guy

well that's not how it started

so if you have your bibles with you and you want to uh we're going to be in first kings 11 and 12 quite a bit this morning and we're going to look at the arrival of jeroboam and as we said last week jeroboam

if you go to first kings 11 26

jeroboam was solomon's servant

and he was actually one of those

i'll call him a task master or a boss over a group of israelites from the tribe of joseph when it came to we've always talked about solomon's work projects how we always had projects going on i was always building and

jeroboam was one of those leaders of a group of men that were working on these projects for solomon

and it says right in the account it describes jeroboam

as

solomon saw among the young men that he was industrious and he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of joseph

so solomon saw qualities in him that were advantageous for solomon to hire him and to make him a leader of men so there's a quality we're going to find about jeroboam right away and it does carry on later in the account he's a leader it looks like he's a born leader

so jeroboam we we learned that about him we learned that he had a position among the workers of solomon's um workforce

and one thing that we we talked about last week is that he was probably privy up to a lot of information you know when you're a boss at work

or you're within a group at work people love to gossip and talk and you can learn a lot of information by listening

and we're going to find out that jeroboam was probably a great listener because during this time he probably heard a lot of the grumbling going on about solomon how hard the work was how unfair it was and the people complaining and he all this would just day after day sink into his head and give him ideas so that's another thing we need to consider as we look at jeroboam but there was someone else that was interested in jeroboam as well and that was god

god saw something in jeroboam that

he could use in his in his plan

so we're going to look at that real quick and it starts with the arrival of a hija the prophet who comes to jeroboam as he's going to jerusalem and ahijah

starts in verse 29 comes from shiloh he was a shyla knight does anyone remember any any key and i have it up on the screen so you could probably cheat if you want and look at it but shiloh was the place

where joshua with the tabernacle was set up

shiloh was the place where the tribes divided the land by lot

coincidence that a hija was from shiloh no

no god was going to cause again for the tribes to be divided by lot by a prophet from shiloh

it's just one of the the amazing rhythms of scripture isn't it throughout scripture these rhythms that just are undeniable so elijah appears to jeroboam and i don't know what jeroboam was going to jerusalem for but it says he was headed there and ahijah has a new garment on

and that new garment was representing israel

representing the new division of israel to come by the lord god and we read in in the account that ahijah

caught the new garment that was on him and i have up there that the word garment indicates it was a dress or a mantle so i pictured something that was from head to toe

one long i should have probably tried to find a picture of it but i didn't and it's reminder

of when king saul was told after he failed to totally wipe out i think it was the amalekites in in 1st samuel

15

that he was told the kingdom would be rent for you you remember and he re reaches out and grabs hold of the garment and tears a piece off of it

this reminds me of that it happens here as well so we have jeroboam tearing this garment that ehyge is wearing in this portrayal of a new start for israel all under the control of god

dividing again the tribes as they were divided earlier in joshua's time at shiloh

so we have this happening again again god saw something in jeroboam that he he could use for his plans and purpose

verses 31-36

of

the account here in chapter 11 talks about um this division into the two and the ten tribes and if we could look up and if uh ii samuel 19 verse 43

this has happened before this isn't new this this this division of these tribes

in second samuel

chapter 19 and this is an amazing and we'll be we'll be coming back to this later because there's so much that happens in this this second samuel 19 and 20

that applies to what will happen

to ray obama's kingdom so i'm going to skip around a little bit because some of this information we're going to get back to and i don't want to ruin the later on stuff now but in verse 43

if you remember this is when david makes his return to jerusalem and barzillai uh he greets baseline and thanks him for all the kindness in inverse

starting in verse if you look at 39

it says all the people went over the jordan and when the king was come over the king kissed barzillai blessed him and he returned unto his own place

then the king went on to gilgal and chimham went on with him and all the people of judah

conducted the king and also half

the people of israel

and behold all the men of israel came to the king and said unto the king why have our brethren the men of judah

stolen thee away and have brought the king and his household and all david's men with him over the jordan

so we're going to talk about this in a little while

lord willing again tribal jealousies rearing its head we mentioned it last week i'm going to hopefully talk about it a little more today but you can see the the the other tribes of israel saying wait a minute why is judah you know taking him taking him away like that and all the men of judah answered in verse 42 the men of israel because the king is near of kin to us he's our king

you know pumping their chests so to speak

you know like um in the day this won't mean anything to you guys but when i was a teenager we had a basketball player in my high school by the name of craig watts

he was almost almost 6 10. he was a big man and he was a pretty good basketball player and ever you know the town easton's craig watts you know they declared him as their own and i think craig watts after college never returned to east

so um you know this is what was happening here the tribe of judah was you know david our king david from judah david ours you know you could just see it and the other tribes were jealous they were upset over this this declaration

of david um you know being just judas so we can see this division already appearing here long before we get to the account of rehoboam and jeroboam

uh throughout the the reading of the prophecy uh back in first kings 11 you'll notice how many times

the words for my servant david saca mentioned and there's seven times

that those words are mentioned um repeatedly

you know god didn't forget david didn't forget his faithfulness and his love and and his faith in god and he continually brings this about um to jeroboam

in in in this time where jeroboam learns that he is going to get 10 tribes and lead the nation because of solomon's apostasy and then he also mentions jerusalem for jerusalem's sake you know god said he would set his name in jerusalem and that wasn't going to change

even with this redivision of the land

so jeroboam

hears these words from ahijah and we're going to skip down to verse 37 because

these three verses are amazing to me and i don't think i've ever really contemplated them before

you know as as i said you know many times we read scripture and we read it

and we don't really dwell on it or think about it and listen to these words in verse 37 of chapter 11.

and a high just speaks to jeroboam the words of god and this is what god is saying to jeroboam okay

god i will take thee jeroboam

and thou shalt reign according to all that thy soul desireth and shalt be king over israel

and it shall be if thou wilt hearken unto all that i command thee and will walk in my ways and do that is right in my sight to keep my statutes and my commandments as david my servant did there's david again

i will be with thee and build the ashore house as i built for david and will give israel unto thee you know i will be and i will for this afflict the seed of david but not forever

those words in verses

37

and 38 remind me a lot of what god had said to david and to solomon didn't it remember we looked at some of the warnings to solomon and one of them was you know you you know you'll have long life if you obey me the kingdom will be yours these are the same words

almost as god spoke to david

and he's saying them to jeroboam

if you will follow me i will build the assure house

and this is something i've never

you know again when i think of jeroboam he's the man that caused israel to sin i'd never really contemplated that god had said these words to him if he obeyed

all right and we know that in the future the words that if thou wilt hack and unto all that i command thee will be a real challenge for jeroboam and it's going to happen real quick

you know this isn't a prolonged thing like solomon who solomon as we we looked at over his lifetime started off great but slowly and surely over the span of his life he started turning away from god and started turning to his own pursuits in his own desires well that happens really quick for jeroboam

it starts really quick for jeroboam

okay any questions or comments before we go on

wow it's great to see you everybody hi stevens annie good to see you

everyone come in that snow's not too bad so it's great to see everybody so next thing we read is we skip down to verse 40. so these promises are made to jeroboam

basically he it sounds like he just needs just but he needs to be faithful and divine god's divine power will intervene over his rule right that's what it seems like and then we get to verse 40 of of the chapter and it says that solomon sought to kill jeroboam and i didn't point this out back when a hija met jeroboam but the the record clearly states

in verse 29

when they met that they were alone

the biblical record says the two were alone in the field

so i started thinking you get to verse 40 and it says solomon sought therefore to kill jeroboam

so how did solomon find out what was going to happen

how did he find out that maybe a hija had talked to jeroboam and that the tribes were promised to him

it's solomon's sons reign and the only thing i can think of is that jeroboam told everybody about it

and he was plotting on his own

behind the scenes remember he was working with a group of people that were complaining and saying things about solomon and i think over the course of time jeroboam started thinking i can win the hearts of these people

and i can be their king and move the process up instead of on god's time and wait for god well i've been promised these things maybe maybe i'll start the process sooner and see if i can get this thing to happen and solomon heard of it people somebody must have told solomon and solomon went after jeroboam and jeroboam flees to all places egypt everyone flees to egypt um and this shows you know jeroboam's we we said he starts his fall pretty quick and this is where it starts because we've talked about last week in deuteronomy 17

with one of the first commandments god gives through his king is thou shalt not return to egypt

and that's where jeroboam goes first and foremost he flees to egypt breaking the commandment of god

um and most historians as we get to the death of of king solomon uh have really settled on a date of 931 bc for solomon's death and the thought being that jeroboam probably fled to egypt some three to four years before solomon died

so he would spend three to four years in egypt and as you know three to four years is plenty of time to be consumed

by the idolatry um the cravings of the flesh the lust of the flesh the pride of the of egypt that's a lot of time to be spending in egypt and that had to change jeroboam even more uh as he comes back

so i think it's pretty clear as we read this account that he had great opportunity jeroboam did uh he was a leader he had potential and not only did solomon see that but god did as well

and he must have possessed a great potent potential to be to develop after what david's pattern was

for god we as we read promised him a short house if if he followed him and obeyed him but as we soon find out

he couldn't do it or he didn't want to do it

and again the biblical point drives it home that he lived in egypt that he stayed in egypt if you look at chapter 12

the first couple of verses

verses two and three

it came to pass when jeroboam the son of nebat who was yet in egypt heard of it heard of the death of solomon um that he was fled from the presence of solomon and jeroboam dwelt in egypt

that they sent and called him and jeroboam and all the congregation congregation came of israel came and spake under roy obama and this will be an account we'll get into in a little bit so it's stressed a couple of times that jeroboam was in egypt

and let the reader know what egypt usually does to people

okay

so now we get to rehoboam so we've covered roughly 17 chapters in first kings 11 and part of 12

talking about jeroboam

and we haven't even talked about the successor to king saul

king solomon upon his death

and

so we kind of need to fill in some pieces we know a little bit about jeroboam from what we've read but ray obama just appears um i couldn't find any previous references to rehoboam in the biblical account until this one here that says ray obama went to shechem for all israel will come to shechem to make him king and he's mentioned

in verse 43 of chapter 11 after the death of solomon it says that rehoboam would be king

i couldn't find anything else prior to that on him so we really need to to look at things to find out where raya boa might be at as he's to become king

uh one thing we do know he is he was 41

years old when he became king so he wasn't a young man he was i guess would consider that middle age nowadays um

you'd say it's young

wow why because we're all older than 41.

yeah i guess i wish i was 41 again could do a lot more at 41 than i can today

but he was 41 years old and his mother was an ammonitis and if you remember back from first kings 11

those were from the group of the strange women that solomon loved

you know the forbidden women the women that caused

solomon's heart to turn away she was one of those women

so that aspect right there has to give us a little warning about ray obama

consider for a second if you will

solomon was a busy guy

i mean his hand was into everything uh building projects philanthropy you name it and with all those wives and all those children you know it had to have been hard for him to concentrate on one son even if this son was to be king

so i'm sure a lot of ray opponens growing up was influenced by his mother

and

that couldn't have been a good thing if she's listed among those who

you know the strange wives that worship strange gods that couldn't have been a good thing for ray obama

another thing you know we know he grew up in the lap of luxury right i don't think rehoboam ever picked up a hammer or a saw or a shovel or or did any of that kind of work he was probably lived among servants and lived very well and taking very well good care of

so that tells me that maybe his his heart and his mind really weren't

in tune with the people he was going to be king over

he wasn't david

david was in tune with the people he really was his heart and he he was one of them

rehoboam wasn't with the the everyday israelite i don't think rehoboam would be able to relate to them and that's going to be another key uh to his success or failure in leadership

and how about his father

you know one thing i just thought of this morning and i don't know why i didn't think of this sooner but you know do you think ray obama ever saw solomon copying the words of the law in the book

as as god had asked the kings to do

did ray obama see solomon do this

if he did did he remember it maybe it was in his young years six seven years old and solomon was writing

did he remember it did david talk to solomon i mean did david talk yeah did solomon talk to rehoboam sorry about that about god as they were instructed to do teach your children in the ways of the lord did he talk to rehoboam about this book

and the need to copy the law for himself

did ray obam see remember that part of solomon's life or do you remember the later years of solomon's life

when solomon had turned his heart from the lord is that what rehoboam's going to remember and is he going to be influenced more by that and we'll find out

that as well and we i know we all know what happens to ray obama but these are some of the questions i came up with as i was you know preparing this class trying to get into ray opom's mind a little bit and obviously we we can't be sure but we we can reason

we can reason a little bit on the the circumstances of his life um you know what was solomon's words in ecclesiastes of one man's sin causing others to sin going to play out in ray obama's life

would solomon's what part of solomon's life would would affect rehoboam the most

you know and you tend to think nowadays i think we call them spoiled rich kids or preppies or i don't know what the words are nowadays but was he one of those

chances are he probably was and what how he was raised

you know

i can't imagine him playing out in the the dusty streets of of jerusalem with with the other kids he was probably playing with other children of like privilege

you know

so those are things sometimes we got to think about when when we read scripture as the upbringings of that person if we can tap into some of that and it kind of explains a little bit of of how they turned out and what led their lives

he was probably very inexperienced with people we already mentioned he probably couldn't relate to the everyday israelite

and then another thing that came to me later

did he ever ask is there an account of him praying to god

asking god for that same wisdom remember solomon asking for that understanding heart to lead the people

there's no account of rehoboam ever doing that or praying to god at all that i could find

it doesn't seem like there's much wisdom in rehoboam's

reign at all

so

i i you know when it comes to praying to god for guidance he doesn't seem to did there's no account of him doing that

so there's a lot of questions about ray obama's leadership as he heads to shechem

to meet with with the tribes to coordinate him as king over israel a lot of questions

but before we answer those questions and we're going to spend just a little bit of time because i think it's important just to set a mood and we're not going to look at at all of these

because i think you'll know most of them so it's kind of a refresher as we look at at these um

you know we talked about tribal jealousies how all this stuff

was under the surface of solomon's kingdom long before rehoboam goes to shechem

all right i don't want you to think that rehoboam goes to shechem he tells the people no i'm going to chastise you with scorpions and that's it that's that caused the whole split

we we already read one reference where there was already jealousy and tension between the tribes and that started early on uh with lear and rachel jacob's wives and we're not going to look this up but you all remember the backbiting the back and forth between the two of them

their their

their handmaidens and their children throughout their lives there was jealousy uh you know when it came to childbearing uh in jacob's attention there was this jealousy that brewed early on and jacob was a huge contributor to that jealousy and that tribal division um you know uh genesis 33

this is if this doesn't point out

a big you know fact a point of jealousy between

the tribes rachel and leah i i don't know what does

and it it to me you know when you first read this account you know it's kind i kind of gloss over it but listen to these words of what jacob does and if you remember in genesis 33 jacob's preparing to reunite with esau and you remember how fearful he was

esau is going to attack me he's going to take he's going to take my wives my children my things you know because of

the hatred that jacob perceived esau still had for him and look what jacob does in chapter 33 uh in verse one so jacob lifts up his eyes and he looks and behold he sees esau coming and what does he do

uh he he he divided the children onto leah and under rachel in under the two handmaids and he put the handmaids and their children at the front

and leah and her children after

and then rachel and joseph in the back

if that doesn't show you who we favored rachel and her and joseph over the others i don't know what will so it's all right for the the handmaidens and their children my son my children to be in the front and if he saw gets that's okay that seemed to be acceptable to jacob but i'll i'll put the others toward the back so again this this developing theme of of tribal jealousy you know if i if i was leah and it's like i'd be like wait a minute i'm the oldest i should be in the back right i was your first wife put me in the back why is rachel behind me why do i have to take the arrows before rachel you know this this theme of of of tribal you know jealousies and we saw it again we all know the story of the code of many colors in joseph jacob's favoritism toward joseph

the blessings in genesis 49

where where jacob says the other tribes will bow down to judah

and that jesus the scepter will come

from the tribe of judah

you know you can't tell me that these type of words didn't

affect the other brothers the other tribes

and in numbers two we read in the wilderness wanderings that

judah would be the leader would take the head whereas ephraim and manasseh those of joseph would be in the back we'd bring up the rear

in the in the judges the covenant was kept

the ark was kept in shiloh in ephraim

which is part of the northern tribes again little things that you may not think of but contribute to this tribal jealousy

samuel was from the tribe of ephraim and he anointed the first two kings

david if you remember was anointed first by samuel

and then who would anoint him he was anointed three times if you remember the first time by samuel

and basically that first anointing was king saul you you've been rejected this is the true king

all right it kind of reminds me a little bit of of jesus's baptism when john baptizes jesus

almost proclaiming this is the true king

this is what i read here you know samuel anoints david as king

you may be king now on paper but this is the true king and then judah

baptizes david as their king

before even the rest of israel joins in i think it's seven years later

if you remember david was first anointed by judar and hebron

and then it was seven years later when all of israel got together and anointed him king over all of israel so there's judah again first and foremost

over the other tribes you can see the divisions uh forming and david throughout his reign tried to bring things together between the two tribes

by forming alliances

you can see some of the quotes here and we won't we won't look at them just for time's sake but he tried to be a unifier of the tribes by things that he did

all right but still throughout it all the tension was there and unfortunately his son solomon would go on to

stir things up again

solomon would add to that rift

he created if you remember from our classes on solomon he created 12

districts throughout the land and he put

a person in charge of those districts and those districts were responsible for a couple of things

they were responsible for providing for the palace for the administration and they were supposed to provide the taxes to the land

but there was one big omission

the tribe of judah was excluded from doing this

again you can see

you know the contribution how how angry must over time these other tribes been that judah was excluded

you know that's like you know mark you got to pay two thousand dollar a month tax but elizabeth you don't have to pay anything

free ride

that that would make people jealous envious and i'm sure that did that

and a seldom

point was the one regarding to you remember the account we looked at solomon and hyrum had made an agreement

hiram would provide ships material for shipbuilding for solomon's massive fleet and solomon was to provide

i think it was uh he was to provide land cities he promised hiram great plate great land

and we know in the account that when hiram went and saw his land he left tire which if if you can see on the map up above tire

is right about if i can get my mouse over there i think that's tire right there it's up in the northern part of galilee north north of galilee so tiger comes down and he looks at this city's land and he he called them cobble

or barren worthless

and he went and he said my brother you know i gave you all this and this is what you give me in return

and we quoted this as part of solomon's change

he was becoming an unfair

in his dealings with others he was looking for advantages you know whatever i can do to keep my money you know if i can give him this you know i'm happy with that

you know so the the people of the north

must have been taken aback by that wow you're calling our land barren and and useless and and all these things and and that had to to you know prick them a little bit

you know into their bone marrow as it came to solomon and what did solomon do we talked about this as well a lot of that money that solomon took from the northern tribes the workers

that were mostly from the northern tribes

he didn't use and spread them out all over the empire

okay especially later on when when shaishak

the king of egypt was threatening israel he poured all his resources into the south

into judah he fortified it he built the wall at jerusalem he did all these projects the temple the palace you can keep going all these things he did were in the south

that's like you know taking massachusetts tax money and sending it all to california what good does that do me that the north is claiming and they had a threat of their own in the north

didn't they we talked about that um hey dad and res they had their own problems up there and solomon didn't really seem to mind them much attention he was worried about the south and he concentrated his forces there so this rift um

was really starting to take shape and it would climax

here at shechem

as rey brother steve

you say that um he divided the districts purposely uh

yeah he divided by his own division it wasn't i don't know if you can see but some of the divisions kind of cross

tribal lines so so in other words like he'd split a town in half yeah in some cases he did yeah so he split things up and this must have caused some more division amongst amongst the tribes as well um he split them up for for collection of taxes taxes and and purposes for for serving the palace interesting yeah thanks mark yeah interesting stuff so i think it if you think about it steve if if i all of a sudden became governor of massachusetts and i said well i'm going to rewrite the maps of the state for taxation purposes and i drew a line in the middle of mansfield

you know half a man's field is gonna do it this time half you know it's just further division among the people you're being alienated you feel you know like you're not part of the whole and that's what i think the northern tribes really felt as you know you you read in verse 1 of chapter 12 and the first question you you need to ask yourself is why is rehoboam going to shechem in the first place

shouldn't he be in jerusalem to be crowned king

and i think this has a lot to do with these divisions the people of the northern tribe said look at

we want to speak to you first we are all set to make you our king but we need some concessions our way first

you know this is what we need and this is something that's gone on through history right i mean you see the way uh people of color were treated in in certain cities and you know

yeah it's pretty yeah

inconsistent throughout history it is where you'd see the way a man yeah yeah good point

yeah so by the time

ray obama you know and i don't know maybe he was naive maybe he knew ahead of time what was coming um you know i he goes to shekham and the reason i think that it was checkum was chosen is the northern tribe says you know we we need some concessions here and this is the first one you're going to come to us we're not going to come down to jerusalem to you you're going to come to us

and check them and we'll talk about this and then if we're happy you know we'll make you king

and that's that's why i think he went to shechem unless somebody has a better answer that really the only one that makes sense to me is is why he went there

and

before we even get

to the results of of his trip to shechem um

you know those those famous words that we're going to read later on what portion have we and david this has happened before

this has happened before so what's about to happen to ray obama at shechem should not be a surprise because it happened before in second samuel and we just looked at these verses in chapter 19 and i didn't want to go any further because it would take away this part of of one that i wanted to talk about but second samuel 19 and i should have had you kept your fingers there but it and i should have kept mine there but if we go back there

okay

and look at verse 41 to 43

um

well we'll just skip to verse 43. so again this is when david returns to jerusalem in the northern tribes the men of israel answered the men of judah after jude has been bragging that david's hours and they said hey we have 10 portions in king david

10.

we have 10 parts in king david and we have more right to david than you

why then do you despise us

that our advice should not be first had in bringing back our king

in the words of the men of judah were fiercer than the words of the men of israel

that must have been something to hear that back and forth

okay and then as we go into verse 20

we read of of sheba's rebellion and these very words that are going to be spoken by in jeroboam's time were spoken here

we have no part in david neither have we inheritance and the son of jesse every man to his tents o israel

and we know that this rebellion failed

but this next one

you know it's like a flashback it it's going to happen again and this one would succeed

all right so then in the account back in first kings chapter 12 we're told that the the northern tribes basically summoned jerome back

so obviously in the four years that he's been gone a lot has been going on maybe there was correspondence back and forth i don't know between some in the in the northern tribes that wanted to rebel again in jeroboam

and finally they got word hey solomon's gone

and we got this man ray obama who we're not too sure about why don't you come back

and you know and they put him in the leadership role

front and center as they go to rehoboam

to off to ask for their concessions for their their faithfulness to him as king

and we know what they wanted they wanted a break from the taxes and they wanted a break from the heavy yoke of the work that they were doing under solomon

and if you if you think about it and if ray obama had that understanding heart that his father had early on he would have been very sympathetic to their cause

he he just could not read

the the error of the people like many of our leaders today you know don't know the the real working class the real everyday persons struggle you know they can come out and say yeah i understand food prices have doubled and gas is tripled and and everything but do they really really understand it

ray obama didn't and we know by his responses uh that he didn't and he fails

to have that understanding heart that that solomon had early on so we right away get this

our answers to our questions about rehoboam

he wasn't going to reflect the early

part of his father he was going to reflect the later part

you know you thought my dad was tough i'm going to be tougher on you i'm going to want more taxation and i'm going to work you harder than you've ever worked before

okay but one thing he did do correctly and will end here

is he may not have reached out to god there's no mention of asking god for help

when jeroboam and the northern tribe come and say you know this is what we want ray obama says give me three days

and i'll give you an answer and he doesn't go to god

now he does go to the old men

um

who had been there from the end of david's reign through solomon's reign so they had a lot of wisdom and these old men had have read it correctly they basically said you know be a servant under these people let's lighten up on them a little bit and they'll follow you

and you remember i probably put it i did a principle that jesus sets forward and we won't look it up but you you all probably remember it quite well you know be a servant

a true a true

believer is a servant to others not a ruler a harsh ruler like ray obama wanted to be

so he he turned to his peers and again we mentioned earlier who his peers probably were they were probably 40 year old rich kids

i mean i don't know other way to put it well-off kids maybe well-educated uh

you know very well-off financially those were his peers and that's where he went for his advice and of course they

you know you got to keep this train going

you know this gravy train that we're on keep it going you know tax them more and don't let up and we know that's the advice

that he seeks

uh as is that of his peers and not that of the older men and we're gonna end there um you know we could we could you know we know everything that's been happening you know was caused by the lord um

this turn of affairs if you look at verse 15 it says cause and i look that up in strong's

and that word is siba in hebrew and it means turn of affairs

a prophet you know a divine intervention god is is ruling in the kingdoms of men and everything that's happening now is under his hand in his control

and then as we know the rebellion is fortified uh the northern tribes go to their tents to be led by jeroboam and the southern tribe of would be led by rehoboam so what we'll look at next week is after

this all happens the after effects where did these two kings turn in their in their in their leadership of the people would they become shepherds

would they become writers of copiers of the law and teaching it to their children and into the people and guiding the people as god had had wanted or we know jeroboam had that opportunity god god tells us what jeroboam had in front of him if he was faithful

what would happen to ray obama and we'll pick that up next week

any thoughts comments

elizabeth you had a question no

anyone

interesting mark i really like the sort of the big picture talking about this uh you know tribal stress and strain and how solomon was involved and sort of creating that yeah um and we tend to sometimes think of these

these ins like this rebellion as a flashpoint it just happened right well no they were

you know 150

years of pent-up frustration seemingly more by the north than the south that just boiled over

and you know that happens in a lot of nations that's why a lot of empires crumble

and you know so that's what happened here you know solomon pushed it to the edge and god said you know this you know this has gone on long enough this is what's going to happen and you know it just all came to a boiling point and the thing that you we're gonna find the kings you know uh jeroboam and rehoboam

look at how god makes this all happen it's like it was a a political process gone bad over but we know it's the divine hand of god the faithful person can see the hand of god in this and will jeroboam and rehoboam see that as they now become kings will they see god's hand in this or is it just all the politics and all the all the the earthly stuff that caused all this to happen so we'll look at that next week

Transcript

well i found this um

on the web last week um it's an it's a painting and i don't know how to pronounce this gentleman's name uh i'll just say it's hobie in and be happy with that sharon's shaking her head do you know holby and sharon no

he was around in the 1500s so

i wasn't sure if you might know him or not

i'm kidding i love you um but he was famous for painting

people from the old testament it's one of his famous things and this painting um is actually in a museum now in switzerland

and it's a picture of uh rehoboam

holding out his little finger remember when he says my little finger will be thicker than my father's

loins

and actually that's what the young men tell him to say

to jeroboam in in the northern tribe but he actually says um you know i'll chastise you with scorpions but you can see him holding out his little finger and to me every time i look at it i think a scrooge

yeah you know ebenezer scrooge but i thought that was kind of neat uh to get a visual

of that time so we we can't come to

we we got to the crisis last week the division where the northern tribes get get to your tents oh israel what portion have we in david and that's basically where we left off so now we're at a crisis we're at a turning point all right there's still in my mind an opportunity here i i kind of think of this of a sports labor stoppage

let's look at it that way you got two sides totally disagreeing with one another they have an option like now the baseball they're on lockout and they're not really discussing anything but they're making attempts to so what will these two kings do

will they put away their pride

and think of the whole the the whole nation all the people and be true dad's already shaking his head because we all know what happens but but yeah neither one but they have an opportunity here to reverse course to come to the bargaining table to talk it over and just say well this is foolish

you know we need to talk this out and do what's best for god's people

or do they they draw lines in the sand and have confrontation and as dad has already pointed out we don't have to have class they draw lines in the sand and have confrontation without considering the people

without reaching out to god for guidance

and their pride just takes over and

so there is always opportunity i guess is a point i'm trying to make um

you know before you know when it comes to major decisions whether it be in an ecclesia

or personal life

you know not to get off on things but many of you know joanne had an opportunity once to take a pretty big promotion out in chicago

when we were younger and it was so enticing you know i could be a stay-at-home dad probably not but it would sounded good and she would get a high position

but we'd have to pack up the kids

and move out to the midwest

and the money part weighed heavily because it was quite a bit of money

probably triple what she was making if not more

so we decided you know what was best for our family and for our children was to be near their family instead of moving away and these guys had the same choice what was best for their families they were shepherds of their people and that's what they needed to be thinking about but what we're going to find out is they they totally weren't thinking of that um they were thinking of their own best interest over the interest of the people and we remember with jeroboam you know he had divine help from god god had told him i will build you a sure house

and he had that in his in his back pocket so to speak knowing that this would come to pass if he if he obeyed and rehoboam had an opportunity didn't he he really did i mean he could have gone back to the beginning of his father's reign and and changed the course of things solomon had done and he could have made things better

but what we're going to see is is as i said that they decided both of them not to follow that course so what did they do

what did they do and uh our we'll be concentrating quite a bit in in first kings

12 13 14 and a few times we'll look at the accounts in second chronicles as well

and most of the references i'll have up here in front of me so you could could look at them so what did they do and the first thing that we read about is truly amazing so if you remember the the northern tribes left because of mainly two things they wanted their taxes lessened and they wanted their workload lessened

they wanted a break they thought they were overtaxed and they were being worked way too hard and all these construction projects that solomon had started and that's what they were looking for

pretty normal concessions so what does ray obama do and it's one verse

right in in chapter 12

verse 18.

so ray obama

sends a doram

to jeroboam in the northern tribes and i'm in second first kings 12

verse 18. he sends a doram and the text is playing it says write in the text

who was over the tribute

so they send the man who represents everything the northern tribes is against and angry about to them

now it isn't clear why he was sent

there are two reasons two thoughts

some thoughts i've read say that he was sent as a delega a delegate to talk to the northern tribe to try to appease them

adorama was it was an older gentleman he was one of the the elders so to speak um some references i've looked at say that he actually started his role as tax collector under david at the end of david's reign and continued through solomon's reign

so he was an elder he had experience and ray obama being inexperienced sent him to the northern tribe

to talk to them others speculate that he was sent there to discuss well you can flee you can turn from us and split from us but you're still going to pay your taxes

you're still going to pay you know we've got all these projects and that need to be taken care of you you still have to deal with that

and the northern tribe's response is swift um it says the durham who was over the tribute and all israel stoned him

swift and decisive

and at that jeroboam quickly

he's reading the the the pulse of the people now i think remember earlier we said he didn't really have a good read on the people when he first told them that he was going to increase their workload well now he does

now he does poradoram had to die for jeroboam to see the light and he flees and goes back to jerusalem he goes back home

into his palace

so

now it's really getting tough okay the point of no return is getting pretty close and and ray obama even pushes it further as we read in the account starting in verse 21 he prepares his armies for war

you know whatever a durham went to the northern tribes and talked to them trying whether it was to appease them to reconcile or to talk about the tribute

ray obama said that's it i'm taking it by force

and he set up a hundred and eighty thousand men to prepare for battle

again

no mention of him reaching out to god

and asking for god's guidance

war

and boy does that ring a bell with us today with russia knocking on the ukraine's door amassing troops

and just preparing to to take it by force that's what ray obama was going to do here is my force now he was probably outmanned at the time i think israel probably his army was probably at least twice as big as his but that didn't matter we're going in we're going to take bring it all back

not by the hand of god but but by my hand

and he gets

and you know it just shows the pride and the arrogance of rehoboam his inexperience

so instead of shepherding the people he was willing to have thousands upon thousands slaughtered

so what about jeroboam

well jeroboam goes about and he starts fortifying and the first place he fortifies is shechem

which would become israel's first capital the capital would move around a little bit it actually goes to i believe terza for a little while and then ends up in samaria

and most of the time when we read about the capital it's it's mentioned as samaria but right at the very beginning he fortifies shechem so obviously he's thinking something's coming it's going to happen so we fortify shechem um

and then he builds up penul

and one of the fascinating things that i find when you need to do a study when you do a study is the places that are named in scripture how many times do you read the names of the villages or the cities and just read them and not think about their significance

i do it all the time all the time but what you're going to find in these readings throughout the kings is if you look back you'll see some of the history of some of these places that are named and you probably all remember penul that's where jacob wrestled with it with an angel

and realized how dependent he was on god helping him through his struggles instead of trying to do it on his own

how ironic is that huh here here is jeroboam building up penul i'll do it on my own

my own power my own strength will get this done in the place where jacob came to realize that he needed god

it's just just some of the you know the way the bible weaves itself is just amazing and this was something that jeroboam would never come to grips with as jacob did jeroboam would never come to grips with that we'll see in rehoboam that there seems to be times when he does

but not fully

he's kind of you know starting there but then he goes back

so i thought that was um

fascinating just looking at that so fortification

both sides were fortifying

well unfortunately they weren't fortifying in the right way

you know in our times of trouble in times where we're we're in need and things are stacked up against us we reach out in prayer and fortify ourselves through the word of god

we look to god as our you know the battle is the lords that's what we turn to and these these gentlemen these shepherds didn't do that at all they relied on their own strength

and one of the amazing verses um if you look up if we go to this in verse 26

of first kings 12

it says jeroboam said in his heart

how shall the kingdom return to the house of david

so all of this was jeroboam

um there's actually a word and maybe i might have it later that it says jeroboam took counsel

and i always thought of the word counsel meaning he reached out to others like ray obama went to the elders and to the younger men for advice

but that word didn't mean the way i thought it meant until i looked it up and it actually meant he thought of it in his own mind

he only consulted himself he didn't consult anybody it was just what he wanted and this backs that up

when it says in his own heart all of this came from jeroboam he didn't consult anybody um you know i manage now a group of people at work

um five people one of my new jobs is to be their boss

and i am their boss final decisions are usually mine always mine but i do take their advice we have pow wows and we we kick ideas around

thoughts what's best for us to operate you know my i'll make the decision or you know or we'll all come to a common agreement um jeroboam you know it was it was his

his rule and his rule only

and now jeroboam faces a test of faith right here and now he starts thinking of his mind

long history of the people going to jerusalem for the feast

and the festivals

how do i drive that out of their minds

how did i keep them under my control

and keep them from not thinking of the past and thinking of jerusalem

thinking of yahweh

thinking of going back

how do i do that

so his mind is totally

warped into his thinking what's best for him as king over anything that's good for his people

questions comments early on

well i can't wait uh yeah yeah yes brother sorry i was just gonna say you all look so cute on the blue mask but i can't wait for the time when we can not wear them anymore

jason ask isn't cute oh yeah pink is that pink

i can't tell i can't see jason it's like only the blue mass people matter i'm sorry you matter

[Laughter]

jim you have a black mask on so we don't even want to go there

yeah really interesting uh stuff um you know just a few when i was growing up my dad would always tell me you know show me your friends and i'll be able to tell you what kind of person you are and you know who we get counsel from who we get advice from can make all the difference in the world for for the direction that our life can go and a piece of advice that i was given was go to people that you know will disagree with the decision you're making so that you can get maybe balanced out and see a different perspective our tendency is sometimes to go to the people that are going to be in our corner and that's how different you know factions and camps could be created and then ultimately you know this has uh led to war and we've seen it in the even in the history of this country you see presidents who surround themselves with only people that will kind of be yes men yes women and they end up making poor decisions and and it ends up in uh in poor leadership and we know the proverbs tells us

that

um in many counsel as many you know advisers is a good thing to have so that we can get like you say you have a pow-wow at work you can bounce around those ideas and maybe something that you hadn't thought of and um you know we we try to do that in our family you know sit everybody down and you know what do we want to do for a family vacation or which bible school do we want to go to or you know there's two study weekends on the same time we know where to what does everybody want to do and that way people feel included in the decision that's being made and they can take ownership of it so that it can be kind of a team effort right yeah exactly and jeroboam

by by what we just looked at wasn't doing that at all it was whatever was in his own mind in his own heart that was going to happen because that's what he wanted yeah thank you brother jason anything else

okay

so now we're going to get to the choices that these two shepherds make um jeroboam's choice was to make sure his own house

by himself on his time schedule not on god's schedule

and he does it by by under the veil so to speak of helping the people you know i'm going to make i'm going to do this but i'm going to make it sound like i'm helping the people and this is where this it's too much for you to go to jerusalem anymore

you know dad and sharon it's too much for you to leave hingham and to come to stoughton one time a week to go to meeting i'm going to set something up right in hingham

how does that sound does that sound good yeah well that's what jeroboam was saying so he sets up two calves

now i've you can see the picture of the calf i have i don't know if that's exactly it or not i've seen

dozens of different illustrations of what this calf might have looked like um but i went with that one because i thought it was pretty good

so he sets one up in bethel and he sets one up and dan

and again the way scripture weaves us through these places think of bethel for one second and you'll see what i have up up on on the screen and you can probably think of another one or two other places these are the first two that came to my mind bethel is where abraham built an altar

and he called upon the name of the lord in bethel

and this is where jacob also set up a pillar

in bethel

and what is jeroboam doing

he's taking these two

significant spiritual places in the children of israel's lives

and he's corrupting them by putting a calf

in bethel

and it reminds me of so much of what solomon did when he built those

poles and images on the mount of olives

jeroboam does it in bethel

that's poignant that's had dust

that stinks

and then he built another one up and dan and i my attempt at a map here i'll show you this map it's

and hopefully you can see so bethel

you see right under israel it says bethel

now if you notice is

a line going near it or through it and brother steve in one of his classes mentioned a main trading road that would go through this area and this road went right through bethel to jerusalem

and these two cities

were only a little ways apart i think it was all of 11 miles if my notes are correct 11 miles

so you got to give jeroboam credit for this he was pretty smart in putting one in bethel because if the people had an inclination to go to jerusalem they'd have to go through bethel to get there

that's why he put it there

now the other one up in dan is a little more mind-blowing dan

you know was some 70 to 80 miles away

from the capital uh of shechem at the time

all right 70 to 80 miles and if i remember correctly that area where dan was i'll bring the map back up dan is way up here in the north and if i remember that's a pretty mountainous area tough terrain it's not an easy place to get to

and you put one there

why would he put one there

and i've been kind of thinking about that for a little bit

and when i look back at dan

if you remember the tribe of dan originally settled

and i don't know if you can see us but if you could see over here along the mediterranean

where joppa is i don't think my map's going to show the tribe but dan was right in this area if i'm not mistaken the tribe of dan and they couldn't

secure the land the philistines you know those dreaded philistines who were always a thorn in the side of god's people were a thorn in the side of dan and they couldn't couldn't subdue the land so they left

and they headed out looking for a new place to settle and they ended up uh way up here um and settled in the city in the city of dan

and what they did there and we won't just because of time get into the story but if you remember back in

back in judges 17 and 18

when they get up to that area that they start their own apostate religion

and i recommend that you look at this this story again they you remember the story where uh micah had made his own images and he hired his own priest

okay and the danites i think it was five men they sent and they basically stole the images and they took micah's priest

so they could have their own worship service

in that area

how appropriate did jeroboam pick that spot as well to to continue this this apostate

worship by sending up a calf and dan and the amazing thing is if you look at verse 30

of chapter 12

and i don't know how to read this any other way but well verse 29 he set one up in bethel and the other he put in dan and this thing became a sin for the people went to worship before the one

even unto dan

i only read that as meaning the people were willing to go 70 80 miles and go to dan to worship this calf

instead of going to jerusalem

they were willing to make that journey to go to dan to worship

so then i started thinking well

why why farther away

and the only thing i could compare it to was jonah remember jonah tried to flee from the presence of the lord and try to get away from god

and that he set this up here out of guilt

that maybe if i go to the farthest reaches of our land

naively god won't know about it

i don't know i can't think of any other reason why it would he would set it up there obviously for the northern folks that lived up there it would be easier to get to than going to bethel but but people were willing to go up there

to worship

so it's an amazing thing when you look at the history of these towns and cities um

you know in this case how ironic it is that jeroboam picked dan to set up his calf and the plight of the day knights and judges

boy it would have been so much easier for them over the course of the time to just stay where they were

reach out to god's help god would have helped them with the philistines right

because we know throughout scripture he tells his people be strong and courageous for the battle is mine the battle is the lord's

you know be patient the time will come when that lane would have been subdued but it's on god's time god on ours

and that's we all struggle with that sometimes and jeroboam didn't want any part of god's time he just wanted everything to happen when he wanted it to happen

questions comments thoughts

okay

so again this is under the guise that sure house that god had told jeroboam about he wanted it on his time and he wanted it now he wanted it to be done on his time frame and the next few verses in chapter 12 talk about everything he did to try to make it set up that way to turn the people's heart away from going to jerusalem to going back to to rehoboam into the things of david and to stay in israel into worship here under his system his nice look at i'm doing this for you convenient

and these verses tell us everything that he he did um

you know he built to simplify he he made priests of the lowest of the people outside the tribe of levi you needed no record no qualifications my friends you wanted to be a priest come on in you can be a priest here no qualifications what god said before don't don't worry about that just come on up uh he changed the feast dates

uh he offered him himself sacrifices upon the altar he took upon himself the role of the high priest and we're to see in a little bit

uh a an amazing event that happens while he's offering sacrifices upon the altar um he sacrificed on the cavs and and the thing early on he probably made to the people look he says these are your gods oh israel you know this is this is a substitute you can you can come here and worship to these like god you know instead of going to jerusalem but you know he didn't mean that you know you're not sacrificing to god yahweh you're sacrificing to a thing made of gold a calf nothing

right but he tried to play it off that way to win the hearts of the people

he placed in bethel the priest he made bethel the city

the the house of worship there that was the center bethel instead of jerusalem it's bethel

all right come to bethel

and we read earlier once again in verse 33 all this was in his own mind his own heart to do this stuff

there's no mention at all of jeroboam talking to elders

even talking to his peers

talking to god

there's no mention at all it's all what jeroboam wanted

and i put up there the quote from solomon from ecclesiastes because jeroboam was well on his way one sinner destroying much good he was destroying the spiritual welfare of the northern tribes

he was destroying it

so what of rehoboam

what did rehoboam do

well he fortified in second chronicles uh it says he had benjamin and judah on his side and he prepared them by fortifying

building up the cities there's a long list of cities that he builds up preparing for war

fortification and we mentioned this earlier at the beginning of our class was this the right

kind of fortification is this what was needed at this time to build up armies and to fight against your brother

or was there another type of fortification he should have sought after

should he sought after that understanding heart that solomon asked for in the beginning of his reign

a heart that could reach out and and try to to mend broken bridges with his brothers i think that's what needed to be fortified not building up of armies and troops for war and rare couldn't see that couldn't see that picture

so he too was preparing for war and an ironic thing in verses 13 to 17

or second chronicles there was actually a door open we're gonna find coming up that there are little windows of opportunity for both kings

to change direction

and this is one for ray obama

see there were still many in israel

that did not accept jeroboam in his new worship and they fled

the levites were told left

and many in israel left

and they went to judah

they went back to judah and they lived there

so all wasn't that great a lot of people were leaving and coming down to judah and this was a great opportunity for ray bone

the account says that with the influx of these people

that they had integrity judah integrity with god for three years

and i take that as meaning okay you know there's some things going on here but overall

you're okay right now three years you they're doing okay and i think it had to do with the levites and the influx of people coming in they kind of kept ray obama in check a little bit before he fully

you know goes off the ledge

and i think that's what's happening and i think he had a real opportunity

to turn things back

but would he do it

would he do it

one thing that he did do and there were quite a few verses on ray obama's uh family

one of the few things that they give him credit for for a wise decision was placing

family members in different parts of his kingdom and instructing them on the on the ways of a politics so to speak

so that he wouldn't run into a situation like happened in shechem he prepared his son abaja who would become king

in the ways of politics so to speak so in that aspect politically he you know is probably one of the wisest things roy obama did

was preparing his family for what was to come and i have to thank brother jim last week you know you could see ray obama had 18 wives

but he was smart enough that three of them were from the line of david and it was from there that abaja would come from from maca

so the line would continue with abijah being from the family of david but he had 18 wives and 60 concubines i do believe it said and he had 88 children

and i mistakenly said a couple of weeks ago that you know solomon had too much time with all his children and all his wives i really should have just said all his wives because solomon his brother jim pointed out it had only three children

out of all those wives so ray obama says he followed in his father's footsteps there for he loved many women

but maca seems to be quote unquote his favorite and his real wife and abaja

would be the sun between their union

so ray obama's downfall

we we we just talked about how rehoboam's kingdom became strong

uh for three years with the influx of the levites and those in israel who disagreed with jeroboam's

apostasy but let's look at second chronicles 12 if you keep your fingers in first kings look at second chronicles 12

and this is what it says

it says when rehoboam had established a kingdom and had strengthened himself

he forsook the law of the lord

in all israel with him

and i found that to be a funny

funny

statement all israel

well he was the king of judah why would he take all israel with him

and then i remembered

all the the levites and all the dissatisfied israelites who moved into judah

to get away from it from jeroboam's apostasy

well here we go again ray obam starting up those three years of okay we're all right

we're soon gonna go on the decline and right they were gonna live through it all again

those in israel that had moved to judah they had to go through it again this time with rare obama

that's the only thing i can think of that that could possibly mean uh with those people that had come down into the land that ray obama's policies were now going to affect them again

and he took them with him into his apostasy

and it says in first kings if we go back there uh back to chapter 14

as we stay on rehoboam and things just start trickling downhill for him and things get worse

verse 22

judah did evil in the sight of the lord they provoked him to jealousy in their sins which they had committed above all that their fathers had done

it's amazing how when you think things get bad enough

with this with judah and with israel it's always mentioned that it you haven't seen anything yet it just gets worse

it gets worse

nothing nothing's getting better and no one's

thinking of making it better that's the thing that that drives home with me that these shepherds of the people

aren't making it better

when they should be

um verse 24 is a disturbing one well 23 they built them high places and images and groves on every high hill and under every green tree so you know what solomon had started you know after three years of respite it just snowballed again

they were continuing in in the sins of solomon in verse 24.

there were also sodomites in the land

sodomites those from sodom and we know how depraved the place sodom was

so even the people that they had driven out

were coming back into the land and mingling uh with god's people

so things weren't good things weren't good at all

and god as we know is not one to stand by and watch

he's always sending messengers or warnings or to try to turn his people around and he does that by using egypt to punish judah

and he sends shai shack who was the pharaoh the king of egypt at the time

he goes in and he takes the gold in jerusalem including the shields that solomon had made those golden shields that he stored in in the house of the forest in lebanon and he took him

what do you think that signifies his significance there and i probably have it up on the screen so you can probably read it so i'll tell you what it signifies to me anyhow

because we're born we're told replace them with brass

so in symbol you have the faith of judah

at one time

at the beginning of solomon's reign which was so great you remember that dedication of the temple in solomon's time

and those verses that say how happy the people were

and how much joy they had in serving god

that was the gold

now they were

reduced to brass

their faith their love of god it just totally

gone away

and so were things of rehoboam's that he treasured were also being taken away

so we're going to go back to jeroboam because as you know there's a lot more to the jeroboam

story than there is of rheobone there's just a little more meat to it so in first kings 13

um as we we get back to jeroboam i mentioned earlier that that image that i had of jeroboam at the altar with his hand being raised he had made himself a high priest and he was offering sacrifices

and god says now it's time it's time for me to intervene in jeroboam's affairs

give him a chance to turn

here's jeroboam's chance and god

sends this nameless man he's just mentioned as the man of god

and he sends them to jeroboam just as jeroboam was about to offer

incense at the altar

and i did a little research and and most people seem to think this is the inaugural celebration

of jeroboam's first big offering unto his gods

and here comes the man of god to interrupt him just as he's about to offer incense

and it says he cries against the altar he has a message from god against jeroboam

against the altar i'm sorry yeah if in the account he actually makes it against the altar he doesn't say anything against jeroboam but it's the altar

and he prophesy um

against the altar in the system of worship and trying to tell jeroboam how displeased

god was with everything and you remember as jeroboam had reached up to the altar he switches he actually turns his hand to grab the man of god can you imagine how angry jeroboam must have been right now this is his shining moment

his day in the spotlight with probably thousands of people there as he's worshipping to this calf and this man dare interrupt the king

so he reaches to grab

this man of god and his hand is dried up

his hand is dried up just like he's doing to the people he's drying them up faithfully spiritually his hand

is his dried up and

jeroboam

as the altar was rent and the ashes are poured out you could see that the power jeroboam had was being taken away by god

god was totally demolishing this form of worship jeroboam had set up and you can only imagine the humility uh humiliation and embarrassment jeroboam had

as king of what was going on from this man of god who had come

and he reaches out uh to this man of god in chapter 13

and we're going to look at those verses because they're pretty pretty interesting it says verse 6

jeroboam answers the man of god and he says entreat now

the face of the lord

thy god

not my god he's your god

and treat him approach him for me please talk to him

and pray for me that my hand maybe restored me again

and the man the god did so in the king's hand was restored to him again and he became as it was before

but it's thy god it's not his god

and the king said to the man of god come home with me and refresh thyself and i will give you a reward

come home with me i'll give you money

i'll give you things

and the man of god was specifically told um by god he tells them god told me not to to eat or drink or to associate with you

or to have fellowship with you i'm here for one purpose i'm here to give you a warning

and that's what i'm here for and he was actually told he says to go another way

and that's an interesting phrase don't go don't come back to judah by the way you came go out another way why would that why would why would god tell him to do that

the only thing i can think of is he didn't want people to think the man of god was in there as part of the worship service

he wasn't there as one of those folks he was there deliver a message and to get out

and that's exactly what he did

but then we read at the end of the account in chapter 13 verse 33 that jeroboam did not return from his evil way and it was unfortunate that it was

a lot of it was probably helped by the man of god who ended up not fulfilling

his full commission because he ends up

eating with the old prophet we're told and he goes back to his house and he eats a meal with him

and he ends up dying he ends up being killed and his body lays on the side of the road and jeroboam hears of it so any thought jeroboam might have thought of turning from his ways

we're quickly squashed

because he sees what happens to the man of god

well this this couldn't have been from god look at look what happened to this guy he's dead you know this this wasn't anything i don't need to do anything different and in verse 33 it says after this thing after he learned the man of god was dead he returned not from his evil way but made again of the lowest of the people priest of the high places so it makes it sounds like he just ratcheted up more

let's go like solomon this building machine is going to keep going jeroboam was this this machine of idolatry was going to keep rolling because this is what i want

and he continued and this thing became sin under the house of jeroboam

even to cut it off and destroy it from off the face of the earth

so we're running short on time but um the final slides that i had which were the final verdicts on both of them and we won't have time to get into it but ray obama actually has another chance

uh shimmy ai comes and he comes to rheobone and

he tells them that

you know talks to them about what god is going to do by sending shy shack

and we're told that ray obama and his men humble themselves before god

and that he publicly for a little while was going in and worshipping god but it seems to have been just the front

and his final

account second chronicles 12 14 he did evil because he prepared not his heart

to seek the lord

and with jeroboam

um his time ended remember his his so-called trusted prophet elijah who told him that he'd get the kingdom

well jeroboam's son had gotten very ill near to death and jeroboam thought i'll turn to elijah he gives me good news why wouldn't i go to him and he'll tell me what will happen to my son and he sends his wife you remember in disguise

but god had talked to elijah beforehand and said the wife of jeroboam is coming to see you this is what you should tell her

and

he goes and and elijah tells him all these tells her all these things and and right away the the one thing as you see right i have on the screen he tells her go tell jeroboam

you know it's almost like he's angry he wasn't man enough to come to me himself he sent you in disguise even

and this is what god has said will happen to jeroboam

he hasn't been like my servant david

he didn't turn out the way i thought it nor hoped he would you've done evil above all that were before thee you cast me behind your your back

uh i'll bring evil against your house

and your child will die

and that child dying i think was actually you know child dying is a horrible thing but

you know i think god did it to protect the child of to what was to come to jeroboam's family line because we read that basha wipes it out

wipes it out

and then the verse that says the dogs

shall the dogs eat

of him of the house of jeroboam that dieth a prelude to what's to come to ahab into jezebel

the lord shall raise him up a king basha who would wipe out the house of jeroboam and of course we all know jeroboam's epitaph jeroboam

who did sin and who made israel to sin

how many times in scripture do you read that 19 times in different forms

not something you'd want to have on your gravestone as the man who caused a nation to sin

and it was a horrible time

but they both had opportunity

they had opportunity whether it be uh shimaya for rehoboam or or ehija for jeroboam

god was there sending them messages during their whole lives

and there were times ray obama does kind of see things and starts to go but he never commits fully to god and he always falls back and finally totally corrupt

worships the idols and the grills and images and jeroboam just never i think saw the daylight

so that's the epitaph on those two kings supposed shepherds of the people

next week we're going to skip quite a few of the other kings and i want to end on a happy note next week

we're going to look at king asa a little bit next week the great reformer will will look at his life and maybe look at armory a little bit to the king of israel any questions comments before i late

wrap this up pop

a lot of the apostasy that we see with these tribes

stems from the earlier fact that they broke they didn't obey god when they went into the land they did not drive out all the inhabitants they allowed many to remain and of course

they were idle worshipers worshipers so that

it's a great point well that went hand in hand with you know their own problems right you had all these people in the land already that were worshipping false gods the sodomites yeah yeah you had groups and they didn't drive them out right let them stay that's part of their problem right also because of that

one tribe would infringe on the territory of another causing friction so all that played into it right that's a great point dad

thank you anyone else

Transcript

um

so continuing last week um

i i

thought i had covered everything with jeroboam but then i forgot the last few years of his life so we'll touch on that quickly when it comes to abasha king of judah but i put up on the screen

the kings of israel and judah for about the 60 years after solomon and there should be something pretty as an overview striking when you look at the list

the amount of kings in israel at the time are almost double of what is in judah and the main reason for that is is one judah even though they were

not totally committed to the lord

they still held on to worshiping yahweh

they they still had idols groves

in their in their nation but they still held on to the worship of yahweh whereas israel as we know from looking at jeroboam totally blew yahweh out of their lives uh for the most part and the consequences of that

were a a period of

during the whole 200 years that the nation of israel was separated from judah was chaos

without god in their lives without god being their their king

the nation of israel really

had a lot of troubles and politically as well as you can see by some of these reigns how short they were

political aspirations assassinations upheaval that that summarizes the nation of israel and we'll see that a little more today as we go through our class whereas judah was a little more secure a little more

solid so to speak and as we get to king asa um we'll see a a great

uh revival in judah uh one that never really takes place in israel so i just wanted you to see that and if you notice king acer of judah his reign

was roughly 40 to 41 years

and that encompasses the reigns if you if you look of of the end of jeroboam's reign right down to ahab

all seven kings

of israel at one point in time had to deal with asa

during his reign and that just goes to show you again the mark differences and and it really when i think about it you know times in my life when i don't call upon god or don't lean upon god

and lean upon myself to try to do things usually end up more turbulent than that when they started when you lean upon god seems things always seem to be a little clearer it seems the work out maybe not the way i want them to work out but the way god wants them to work out so see things seem to be a little smoother when god is involved in our lives and we'll and that's one of the great lessons i think from these kings when you think about it is you know you see the pain and the turmoil many of them went through because they had turned away from from yahweh

so what we're going to do is i mentioned earlier

um

i'm frozen here

who's that hey good afternoon butch nice to see you're on time

always good to see you brother so the end of jeroboam's reign you remember last week we talked about the death of his son

and how god in his mercy saw something good

in jeroboam's son that he he took his life then instead of having to endure the cruelty of the death that jeroboam's family would endure and it one of the amazing things that we didn't look at it uh at the death of jeroboam's son but at the end of chapter 14 it says this

um when jeroboam's wife she came to terza in which she came to the threshold of her house her child died

and listen to this they buried him in all israel mourned for the child

all israel mourned for the child according to the word of the lord

what happened when jeroboam died there's no mention of anyone mourning for jeroboam so again that that goodness there was something in jeroboam's child

that touched some of the people in israel so jeroboam in the last three to four years of his life did not have it easy he lost his son and now he had um abidesha to deal with ray obama has already died uh he died probably four years before jeroboam and his son

abijah or a bai jum as second chronicles we'll call him takes over in rehoboam stead and

abaja

you the first thing you have to think of and brother jason brought it out last week with rehoboam was the household that he was raised in just think of it for one minute abaja knew nothing but hatred and war

between his father and jeroboam he knew nothing but that he grew up in that kind of i'll call it toxic a toxic household he really did so he was very much

like his father but he was more so than his father he took it to the next level he was very aggressive with jeroboam uh so much so that in jeroboam's as we see ebija only reigned for three years but he packed a lot of aggression into those three years against jeroboam and there's the account in second chronicles 13

of where jeroboam

musters his armies against

uh where baja musters his armies against jeroboam even though he's outgunned two to one the account in second chronicles 13 says the jeroboam that abaja shows up for a fight with 400 000 men

jeroboam sitting there with twice as many men 800 000

all right and he goes to a place called mount and i'm probably going to mispronounce this uh zemerayam in which is located just outside of bethel if you remember bethel was where jeroboam made the center of his false worship where he set up the calf and that's where his center of false worship is so so elijah goes basically to the heart of jeroboam's false worship and he calls out to jeroboam

and it reminds you of of of the prophet um

the hydra who came who jeroboam's wife came to see and his words to her were tell jeroboam

and abijah does the same thing here he calls out jeroboam and

and his people um and some of the things that he says to him uh abaja stood upon mount zamarram uh which is part of mount ephraim and he said hear me thou jeroboam in all israel

all right and he goes through this laundry list of things how how they've turned away from god and he mentions things like well god is with us we have david

as our king the family line is through david and and you jeroboam have destroyed all that and you have caused israel to sin

now of course at the same time abaja hadn't really done anything in judah to clean out you know the idols that type of worship but they still they still worship god so he could use that he used that lever against jeroboam you know you've gotten rid of god totally and this is what you've done you've caused israel to descent and when he was surrounded because jeroboam

puts his armies into play he surrounds

uh abaja with his army

abijah turns to god

he turns to god he prays to god for help and god helps him and the account says that 500

000

fell down slain that is a number i just can't comprehend that's almost the population of boston

500 000 men fell down slain

and he goes in and he takes control of bethel he goes right into the heart of jeroboam's worship and he takes it

he takes it from jeroboam and in the account in verse 20 in second chronicles we read that jeroboam

um

you know he takes bethany verse 20

jeroboam

never recovered strength again in the days of abaja and the lord struck him and he died

that's a tough end for jeroboam

but when he he knew if if he believed the word of the lord he knew it was coming because of what he had done

so abaja goes in and he takes

you know he gets rid of jeroboam he takes bethel and and that is is basically when when you go to the reign of abaja he was a great military man

and his strength and his energies were dedicated to the military to fighting

like solomon's was his one of his great strengths was building administrations and building up

uh the land ebayers was in the military he really he did nothing when it came to the spiritual well-being of his people um and that would be

come down to his son uh asa

uh who we'll look at in more depth uh in a little bit

so before we get to that there are really two kings we're going to focus on today um sure we'll focus a little bit on armory the king of israel and we'll fi we'll finish off with asa uh as we said all these kings we're looking at now reign during the time of asa during that 41 year period they all had dealings with acer in one form or another and some of these kings of israel we'll just glance at because truthfully there's not a lot in the record to for us to digest

basically their evil reign and that's that's about it um in the we we looked at jeroboam uh after that his son nadab took over and and he was he just continued everything his father had done um you know again if we think about um you know being in a household you know how you rear up your children and how important it is how they're raised imagine the household that nadab grew up in you know like abaja he was seeing nothing but uh hatred you know hatred for rehoboam and for judah but he was also seeing a lot worse

a lot worse things because you know the worship of god was was being destroyed it was being you know

regulated out of israel so he had none of that influence in his life he just had a father jeroboam who was corrupt who was aggressive who was only looking out for himself and who was spiritually ruining his people and that's how nadab grew up

he was assassinated you see his reign was only only a year he was assassinated by basha and in verse 31

of the accountant first kings it's it it's an interesting thing i i as i looked at this last night what it says about nadab in first kings 15

verse 31

it says the rest of the acts of nadab and all that he did are they not written in the books of the chronicles of the kings of israel

no they are not

if you go to chronicles you won't see nadab

they are written but in his wisdom god decided not to include anything else about nadab

in the account for us um and we're gonna find that out with with one other king as well that even though it says there's a written account it's not included for us um and and that tells you something doesn't it

you know you know how how evil this this king was once is enough maybe i don't know but god decided not to include it in the account

and then we get on to king basia and as you can see i i i didn't point this out with the first slide and i should have with abaja but if you look at the um the symbol that looks like a coin with the image of a baja on it it's not a coin i pulled this out of out of the web it's actually a metal or a medallion and i'm not even gonna pronounce you know the the prompturium iconium you know you can read that yourself all i'm to tell you is it it was published in 1553

okay and this this this gentleman made these medallions in the images of of rulers during that time and he made one as you can see this one here of abaja and then he also did it where i could find them i actually tried to pull it for the other kings is the one for nadab um

you know and i thought they were kind of cool i thought they were kind of cool because sometimes you know when you read the accounts you know there are no pictures of my bible so i don't have pictures of what these people look like and sometimes i like to put a face to it it's like when you do emails nowadays i hate email i really do i like picking up the phone and talking to somebody but we do email it's part of the world we live in and i like to put a face to the email so i ask people hey you know one of these days can we do a zoom so i can see what you look like you can see what i look like you know i think it helps things to so i thought the pictures were cool it kind of puts a face to what we're talking about how accurate these are i don't know but you know wait wait do you see armories this is pretty scary this is boy this is pretty scary uh before we move to beijing any thoughts before we go on

okay

so one what one thing about basia and it makes me laugh all the time you can see on the top line what his name means in hebrew

um

i guess i wouldn't want to have a name that means to stink

but again that that kind of summarizes the feeling of these kings in in israel that we're dealing with as a whole doesn't it

offensive they stank to god and basha was no different um he was god's judge though god used him to destroy the house of jeroboam um and he does that in in first kings 15.

um there's not much recorded of him though which is surprising because he reigned for 24 years and there's not a lot in his in the record here for us mainly that he destroyed the house of jeroboam

but the historians say that he he was a very ambitious man striving for power and control that sounds familiar how many kings do we find

you know that don't have their people's

interests at heart they only have their own in the we see it today you know in the leaders of the world

their strive for power and control over the people

he attacks king ace and we'll get into that a little later when we talk on asa but he's turned away and that was a turning point in aces reign

at that point and you would say well well mark you know you know basher attacked asa but he was turned away how can that be it well it was and we'll see why because it wasn't the normal channels that asa had been using to help him turn basia away and we'll look at that a little bit uh in first kings 16

jehu offers this prophecy against basha and some of these words should sound familiar to us because they were some of the words that were spoken to jeroboam

let's look at

verse i don't know verse 3 of chapter 16

of first kings

uh god says through jehu i will take away the posterity of bashar in the bostiti of his house and will make thy house like the house of jeroboam the son of nebat

him that dieth abasha in the city shall the dogs eat

we've heard that before and we're going to hear it again if you continue reading into king ahab and jezebel

that's what's going to happen and those who die out in the fields the fowls of the air shall eat

now the rest of the acts of asia and what he did his might

are they not written in the books of the chronicles of the kings of israel and bashar slept with his fathers and was buried in tursa which was the capital now remember earlier last week i mentioned the capital that moved is starting to move around in israel again that shows you the lack of stability in the country

the capital had moved from shechem and now it's in terzar and it's going to move again under armory and again that's because these kings instead of thinking of the nation really as a whole thought of it as my dynasty what can i do to secure my dynasty and my power and we'll see that big time with armory so basha slept with his fathers he was buried and ila his son reigned in his stead and ila you know is worth maybe in the biblical account what we're really told is that ela is a drunk

he was a drunken king he really should never have been a king he loved his spirits and he was assassinated by zimrai

so you thought ila's reign was short zimrai who was captain of ela's armies

assassinated uh elah and zimmer i became king

anyone remember how long zimmer i lasted on the throne jim sullivan does james

seven days

seven it says right there so i gave it away jim i knew you knew that though um but in seven days of his leadership he wiped out the whole house of basha

seven days

and then we get to king army of israel

now king armory if you read historically with with modern historians

if you take away all the

religious aspects spiritual aspects of army

he's considered a great leader

in modern day terms for the things he did um but it's all the negative things that he did

that kind of ruined some of the positives he did as we said armory was the leader of ela's

armed forces and

after the assassination of zimrai his armed forces make him king

and the account we're going to look at is back in first king 16

some of the things that he does now after the overthrow zimrai runs back to the palace

in terza and he burns it down

and the palace crumbles it caves in on him and he dies now the account doesn't say if he killed himself before he set it on ablaze or you know it's neither here nor there i guess it would have been a very painful death if he had just sat in a chair and in a burning building and falling all over him uh but he killed himself and an interesting thing in verses 21 to 23

is the people of israel if you look at verse 21 of chapter 16

okay it says the people

of israel were divided into two parts

half the people followed timney the son of gennath to make him king

and half the people

followed armory

so when you first read that you don't really think much of it because there's not much detail there but if you dig in a little bit you can find out quite a bit of detail um if you go back a for a few verses in the chapter it says zimrai

uh reigns started in the 28th year of acer and armories was in the 31st year of asa

all right well we know zimri only reigned for seven days

so there was a three-year stretch in there where this division that this verse speaks of encompasses three years

and what happened in those three years is there was there was there was civil war in israel between the two camps

and apparently it was armory who prevailed because he becomes king so again

without god in their

lives controlling

situations you see the turmoil of the nation of israel and how bad it was

it said the people that follow andre prevailed so even though we're looking at two verses it's three years of time that is encompassed in these two verses

um henry prevailed um

and tim and i died in armory reigned

so in the 31st year of asa we have armory king of israel

taking over

in reigning in israel

and he reigns six years in terza

now i mentioned armory is known by modern scholars as a very driven man we talked in those terms about solomon remember how driven he was

in his building projects and making his kingdom glorious for himself you know in ecclesiastes solomon speaks about everything i did what i built you know the ships that i sailed everything that i did you know reminds you of nebuchadnezzar how he speak the same word type of words well armory was the same thing he wanted that dynasty

and he would get it for 50 years and he wanted to build his own legacy he didn't want even though he rebuilt the palace in terza that was burned down he wanted his own legacy so he moves the capital to samaria

and builds his own palace and starts his own dynasty there in samaria um

you know people modern historians again give armory kudos for his choice of the hill in samaria

this hill was about 300 feet wide and i wish i had a better picture it's on the bottom um that area but it was surrounded on three sides by hills

so if you can picture it you know there's a hill on this side a hill on this side and he was in the middle looking this way he was looking out uh to the west

toward the mediterranean coast he had a great view of everything in any one and it was strategically many people's historians say a perfect spot

for him to build and it just shows again you know yeah he's driven he was driven in the wrong way but he was an intelligent man and he was he was a true leader in that respect so he was surrounded by these mountains uh in i guess

the mediterranean again when you think of the land area you know we think the land areas and we think a hundreds of miles difference between and jason could could speak of this but it was only 23 miles

from where he was building to the mediterranean

you know 23 miles from here is boston maybe it's boston 23 miles roughly give or take it's not very far you know it's one thing i love about living here you can be anywhere mountains coast anywhere in short time and it was it's the same there as well

so it was really close um and as i said it's been extolled

by commentators and historians for what he did

but unfortunately where he was so strong in some of those aspects he did nothing for the people in their spiritual life he just continued in the ways of jeroboam and at the end of

verse 25

it says army wrought evil in the eyes of the lord and did worse than all the kings that were before him

and this is another buildup we see

with the kings of israel it just gets worse and worse in the eyes of god which is the only eyes that count you know modern historians may look at army and say well he was a great he was a great leader a great this and but in the eyes of god

you know he was evil and he was worse than all the kings before him and he's not the worst yet and we won't get to ahab but you know ahab would do worse things than armory

verse 26 he walked in all the ways of his jeroboam again

the man who caused israel to sin

and his sin wherewith he made israel descend to provoke the lord god of israel to anger

uh the rest of the acts of armory which he did in his might that he showed are they not written in the book of chronicles of the kings of israel and he slept

with his fathers

again do you notice we don't see anywhere that it says all israel mourned for him

it's not recorded

i mean i guess it could have happened i'm sure he had his own

you know administration and people that were loyal to him

you know do something when he died but it doesn't say all israel

born for him doesn't say that at all

so we're going to end our our talk on the kings looking on on a mostly positive note we're going to look at asa and as we said ace's reign encompassed all the reigns of these kings of israel we touched on briefly

okay

you know asa

and it doesn't say and i i wanted to try to figure out

you know with all the negativity that followed preceded asa his grandfather

and his father

how did asa turn out the way he did

and i i haven't come up with anything maybe if if one of you have you could you could tell me but right away uh we are told good things about asa that he was completely

opposite of his father and his grandfather

he was not aggressive or warlike at all

and he was a lover of righteousness

so i i can only assume somewhat that you know he was a humbler man obviously than his father and grandfather and we're gonna see that he had a heart he wanted i think that understanding heart that solomon prayed for

for the people

and asa wanted to be that way

and we're going to look at continuing first kings

you know he had his first as soon as he became king what we read about him um

and i might have that wrong

let's see

um if we look at asa so

verse 10 of chapter 15.

it says right away he reigned 41 years

and asa did that which is right in the eyes of the lord

so right away we're told that he he tried with all his heart

and that's the key when we think of asa we got to remember that he tried to love the lord god with all his heart

doesn't mean he doesn't fail because he does

and we're told about his failure at the end

but david failed as well didn't he and how many times throughout these accounts of the kings do we read for david's sake

god kept the lamp in jerusalem a light stand

you know david's heart was following the lord our hearts

follow the lord we're far from perfect we make mistakes

but our hearts follow after the lord and aces did as well

um you know he took away the sodomites remember we spoke about the sodomites earlier how they your dad made a great point that their failure to drive out the nations that they were supposed to get rid of at god's command came back and bit them the sodomites were still there and they caused the people to do perverse things

and dad had mentioned that last week where lisa drove them away he got rid of him and i think brother jim boyco in one of his excitations a while ago mentioned to us that we we have things in our lives that cause us to do

you know maybe not the greatest things things that maybe that god his son might not find acceptable would get rid of him totally

asa did that he got rid of the sodomites he drove them out of the land look what he does in verse 13.

now the account here says he removed his mother from being queen took her off the throne

and it really wasn't i did research on this you remember my car we mentioned her a few weeks ago well this would be his grandmother so she must have at some point become like a royal queen like queen elizabeth she's sitting on this throne and she's just there until she passes away well she had groves and idols acer took her out removed her

removed her from the throne

that's that's courage that's strength

that would be like

dear sharon taking her up taking her away you know

i'm glad i don't have to do that

but but asa had to do that

he had to do that and he did it

he did it he removed his grandmother from the throne uh he put vessels back into the temple and uh he did what was right in the eyes of the lord for most of his life and god rewarded him he gave ace of rest for 10 years

the account tells us he had rest

that's a great thing you know we

rest is you know

compare it to us

we have pretty good amount of rest

compared to the rest of the world being in this country

right we see it now

i mean god has given us a period of rest

he gave it to asa

asa did something with his rest

we have rest now does it mean five years from now we'll still enjoy this same rest i don't know we pray that we do that we can come here together as a family in worship

but how quickly times change right in the blink of an eye

situations change so what do we do during this period of rest that we enjoy now

well asa did something remember we talked about fortification in my mind there are two types of fortification there's fortifying armies and buildings for war

and then there's fortifying ourselves spiritually

asa would do both

he took advantage of this time of rest that god provided him and he didn't slack off he didn't kick back and say well i put my feet up on my throne and and just live high off the hog and enjoy things because god's given me rest he went to work

he went to work and in both ways not only did he fortify

um

yeah not only would he go on to fortify um the land

okay yeah he in second chronicles um he builds it up he builds up his army and then in second chronicles we hear he he's attacked by ethiopia

the ethiopians send a million-man army to aces doorstep and threaten him with war

and we're going to go through this quickly because

time just flies by but asa verse 11 of second chronicles 14 it says he cries

he cried under the lord

think of that prayer brothers and sisters and friends he cried

you can see asa

if you think of this this medallion picture of asa prostrating himself on the ground

tears coming down his face a million man army's about to

destroy everything he wants to do for his people

to build them up again and he cries to god for help

and god heard him and he turned back the ethiopians

god heard him and he turned them back and it just makes you think so much of the words of james five you know the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much

will we always get the answer we seek no

but we get the right answer we may not be able to see it

but in god's plan it's it's what's right and in this case he turned back the ethiopians um

so then after the victory over the ethiopians

acer is is met by another prophet uh this one as aurier and the account of that is in second chronicles 15.

and azariah meets acer and his army and

you know he was almost like i don't want to call him a party pooper but you can imagine how jubilant and happy easter and his men were after this battle

well he he comes up and he in his own way he he reminds asa whose victory this really was

you know the victory is the lords right

and

god must have seen something going on that he needed to remind acer of this and he does so um it says azariah went out to meet him in in second chronicles 15 2.

and again hear the word hear me asa

hear me tell tell jeroboam you know you hear those words and you think right away this is coming from the from god hear me asa and all judah the lord is with you while ye be with him and if you seek him

he will be found

but if you forsake him

he will forsake you

then he goes on to say look at you know the troubles that your father and grandfather had that israel had because they're not with god the chaos the turmoil

you know you don't want that to be part of your reign do you

but instead fortify you fortified your land now it's time to go back to work and fortify your people

and asa does that again he redoubles his reformation efforts with the nation and it says for five years he tours the whole nation and he's tearing down the images and the idols and the groves

and he's he's teaching people he's reinstituting the correct worship of the lord he's speaking to as many people as he can and he calls for a meeting of all the people to go to jerusalem

let's all meet in jerusalem and he draws them into a renewed covenant with god

and through all these efforts we in the account it says like it did at the end of solomon when he dedicated the temple it said the people went away with joy

and were happy

and it said the same thing here with asa that after this meeting in jerusalem in their covenant renewing of the covenant the people went away and celebrated they were happy

it's been a while since they've been able to enjoy that kind of happiness

and god gave asa 20 more years of rest the account says

and what did he do with this rest

all this work his heart being fully with god and he his reformation efforts um had had been immense

so we're going to end here and we're not going to have a lot of time to cover this but um before i do any thoughts or comments up to this point on acer and

the great reformation and you know i really suggest there's a lot of material out there not only in the bible but historical stuff on acer as well that if you have time you want to look at it um it's it's quite intriguing

well king basha at the time toward the middle or end of aces reign was still around and he decided he wanted to cause trouble

you know when when you know we can't have judah prospering

in israel being a mess so basia decides he wants to mix it up with acer a little bit and

he reaches out and in the account if you read it in second chronicle 16

asa makes a mistake

asa makes a mistake he reaches out to the king of syria benedad for help instead of god

and he goes into the temple and he takes all the all the gold it says and he gives it to benedad you know break your treaty with baisha king of israel and help me and benedict does

and he causes basha so much problem that bashar turns away and judah is saved

well as

you know the lord

quickly calls

acer out on this and he sends han and i um

to say hey you know you were spared

but you didn't reach out to me

and asa didn't like han and i's message and there's a lot of times

if you think of this god is sending hin and i to correct asa

you know as brothers and sisters we are to um take correction correct that's one of the things we had to do if we're on a wayward if a brother or sister approached me and wanted to talk to me about something we had to listen

we had to listen and you know take it to heart

well this is a case where god goes to acer and wants to correct him but asa does the opposite and that image there is one of of hannah and i talking to asa and asa having him taken away in chains

he didn't listen he didn't want to listen and the end of his life unfortunately he gets a disease in his feet and he ends up he ends up dying

even then when he was ill he wouldn't turn to the lord in prayer

so many many many many good years he reigned

with the lord being being first and foremost in his thoughts

but then toward the end

god wasn't as close to him he wasn't as close to god but in spite of all that we're told that his legacy is of a man of faith and one thing i couldn't find

like we did with solomon how we turned to uh you know

his 800 wives and he set up shrines all over the countryside

you don't see that with asa

so you so the point is yeah he he lapsed and turned from god but

his heart still must have been there somewhere for god because you know in the end he's still considered a faithful man of the lord

you know all the good things he did for judah

were things that people in israel imagine if you had lived in israel

and you yearn for the old days when yahweh was the only way of worshiping you let's say trapped behind the lines in israel

how it must have looked on the other side if they knew the joy and the good things that were happening under asa how you would have longed to want to get out

we see those things in the world today don't we you know these these sad situations where these nations are tormenting and oppressing their people

and it's been going on forever it's been going on forever so that's where we're going to end we'll end with asa