Dean Bible Ministries presents the Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Robert Dean, pastor of West Houston Bible Church. These and other Bible lessons are available from www.DeanBible.org. Now let's listen to our lesson from God's Word, the Bible. How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth. For the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Before we get started tonight, we'll have a few moments of silent prayer to give you the opportunity to make sure that you are in fellowship. And then I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful that we can come together this evening to worship together as we study your word, to fellowship together around your word, and to reflect upon your eternal truths. Father, we know that as we study the history of Israel in the difficult times during the period of the divided kingdom, we see the trends of history. displayed in their history much as we see similar events take place in our own history. And in light of recent election and other trends that are going on in our nation with the economy, with the war in Iraq, the rise of militant Islam, we know that because of the way in which this nation has rejected divine truth, rejected any kind of absolute truth, and has buried itself in a extremely arrogant form of relativism that we are ripe for discipline. And as believers in this nation, we too will go through the storm, but we can weather it because we have your word, we have you, and we can be a tremendous witness in these times to those around us. And Father, the only reason we can have that kind of witness is if we have grown spiritually on our own, and that we are strengthened and fortified by your word and our soul ready to face any adversity that comes. Now, Father, we pray that as we study your word tonight that we'd be challenged by it and it would help us to think more accurately and objectively about the things that go on around us, but it would also impress us with the importance of being in right relationship with you and walking daily by the Holy Spirit. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. A couple of things in terms of current events and contemporary events that we ought to pay attention to. And every now and then, things like this come up to my attention. And so it helps us to think about how to handle things. First thing that I want to note is an email I received today that came across from a group. I think it's called Right Michigan. It's a conservative group. It's either a blog or a website. in Michigan, and it was posted yesterday, yesterday afternoon, and described something that happened in a church in Lansing, Michigan on Sunday. And it states that on Sunday morning, amidst worshiping congregants and following unifying prayers that our president-elect be granted wisdom as he prepares to lead our nation through difficult global, social, and economic challenges, the Michigan left declared open war on peaceful churchgoers. They did it with banners, chants, blasphemy, by storming the pulpit, by vandalizing the church facility, by potentially defiling the building with lewd public sex acts, and by intentionally forcing physical confrontations with worshipers. Now, this didn't take place in San Francisco, but in Lansing, Michigan. He goes on and gives some other details, but talks about what happened this last Sunday. that this church was secretly infiltrated by a number of Michigan radical liberals who sat through the first part of the worship service until they received a signal from their leader. Apparently, several of them were wearing earphones. I don't know a lot about this church. itself, a rather large Bible teaching church, conservative church called the Mount Hope Church in Lansing. Those who infiltrated the church were part of a radical liberal organization known as Bash Back Lansing, and they also put out a number of radical, or write on a number of radical blogs, and they called on, quote, queers and trannies, unquote, that was the terminology they used. from across the state and region to converge on Lansing for what they called an action. And while many of their members claim to be anarchists, their broader goal was clearly to establish those and to target those well-known anti-queer, anti-choice, radical, right-wing establishments. Just a standard, middle-of-the-road, we would think probably a little too moderate, large church. The article describes it as an evangelical Bible-believing church whose members provide free 24-hour counseling, prayer lines, catastrophic care for families dealing with medical emergencies, support groups for men, women, and children dealing with a wide variety of life's troubles, crisis intervention marriage ministries, regular organized volunteer work in and around the city, missions in dozens of countries across the globe, a construction ministry that's built over 100 churches, schools, orphanage, and other projects. So obviously, this was a large church. maybe a megachurch that was targeted because of the publicity. So this radical right-wing establishment, if they're radical right-wing, I'd hate to think what we are. So they got some pre-arranged signal. And they stood up shouting, Jesus was gay, stormed the up and down the aisles, forced their way up and down rows of people in the congregation. They tried to hang a profane banner from the balcony and various other things. They came loaded with a bunch of sexual props to throw around the congregation, all for shock effect. And of course, they brought a reporter. and a video camera, a megaphone, and a number of other things. And the idea was to, of course, create as much trauma as they could and hopefully provoke a violent reaction. And what's interesting is that the people in the pew basically sat there and did not react, which I thought was very good because that was the goal, was to provoke a reaction. and to create an incident. And so the people sat there. and quietly let, and somebody called the police, waiting for the police to come and round these people up and to move them out, which they did. And then afterwards, the people in congregation just got up and cleaned up, removed the stuff that had been thrown around the house, but they refused to react in anger and hate. I think that's pretty good. I know that my sin nature reaction would be something different. But I think that's important for us to be aware of things like this and to think about what our reaction would be if something like that were to happen, not to create an incident, not to make it any worse than it is, and to let the authorities come and deal with what they need to deal with. It's no surprise to any of us that we have things like this going on. We wouldn't expect it in Houston, Texas, you know, because we're such a conservative state. Things like this are happening more and more. And I think with the ascendancy of the liberal political viewpoint in this nation, that they are feeling their odes. And we're going to hear of more and more incidences like this and challenges like this because and even government, more government control. And we just have to pray that we won't have that. Today, of course, is Veterans Day, a day that we have historically in this nation back to the end of World War I. taken time to reflect upon our freedoms and to honor those who have served in our armed forces. Veterans Day was first established as Armistice Day as a memorial to the end of World War I, which was in the idealism and progressivism of the day thought to be the war that would end all wars. And we've gone through six or seven wars since then. But we, sometime after World War II, it was changed to Veterans Day, a day to honor those who have served in our nation's armed forces and remembering the fact that it is because of men and women who have served in uniform that we have our freedoms, the freedom to gather together and to worship freely, which is foundational. I think this is why the freedom of speech freedom of the church not to be imposed upon, not to have any religion established or acted upon by the federal government is part of the First Amendment. And this morning as I was driving Over to my dad's, I was listening to the news and they were playing a lives announcement or statement by Mayor Bill White, and he was commenting on the various things that were going to be going on in Houston today, including the parade this morning, and there would be some visiting dignitaries from some of the nations where some of these veterans had served in preserving their liberties. And it just struck me when he said that, I said, I bet you don't understand what we saved him, what freedom is all about or what liberty is all about. Very few Americans even understand that. I think that in some vague sense, they think of it in terms of being free from tyranny, free from being oppressed by a foreign power. But if you go back and read the literature, read the writings of the founders of this nation, the founding fathers, they viewed liberty as liberty from government. Government was the enemy. Government was the source of tyranny as they were colonies beginning with the Stamp Act back around 1765 and on with the increased taxation, the failure of the British Parliament to have honest representation from the American colonies and to be responsive to them. The colonials understood this to be just repressive tyranny and that they were just being milked for whatever they could get milked for through the various taxes that the British Empire was imposing upon them. And yet today, freedom is often understood by people who don't really understand history, don't understand anything about the kind of thinking that informed the founders, that freedom was understood to be freedom from government control so that people could then be free to be prosperous, free to engage in business, free to worship their God as they saw fit without being hindered by the government, free to marry, free to raise children, free to educate them in the way that they saw fit, and not to be interfered with by the government. And yet today we have lost that, and I never thought we would live to a time when we have seen so much government control and government interference in so many different things. And it is the role of government, biblically, to preserve the nations from enemies within, criminality, to provide justice, and to preserve the nation, protect the nation from enemies without. It is not the job of the government to manipulate the economy. And that is what has been going on in the United States for since at least the early part of the 20th century. And a lot of times what happens is once you start a practice and then it starts to create problems, then you have to interfere even more to try to control that, and it's just a product of arrogance, and eventually it creates even more problems. We should be free from all of this. That's what we were founded to do, but we've lost this as a country and as a culture, and we no longer understand why it is that, or what it is that we're talking about when we talk about freedom and why we're sending young men and women to go in harm's way in order to preserve these liberties. We think these liberties are just the ability to do whatever we want to do to make ourselves happy and to feel good at the moment. It is a purely arrogant, self-absorbed form. of liberty or freedom that is understood by most people in our culture. And we are standing on the cusp of a new presidential administration, and if he carries out the kinds of things that he has indicated he will, we are going to see government expand even more than it ever has before. He'll oversee the greatest government expansion and power expansion ever before. And we'll see then, just as we see in our chapter tonight in 1 Kings chapter 14, that God warned about this in 1 Samuel chapter 8, that this would be the trend of government because of the trend of the sin nature of those in power. It's not that government is evil. but that there are men who serve in places of power in government who, when their sin nature is unrestrained, when they don't have a biblical view of God and man and the depravity of man and the sin nature and the purpose of government, then government is designed for them to simply increase their power base, feed their ego, sustain their narcissism, And the people are the ones who suffer. The people are the ones who lose. And yet, as believers, we can look at this objectively. We can get very discouraged when we watch divine discipline on our nation. And we can become very disheartened when we just see the decisions that are made and we know what the consequences are going to be. But we have to remember that ultimately our real citizenship is not here in the United States. Our real citizenship is in heaven. We are ambassadors for Christ. And on the one hand, we are living within this world, functioning within this world, and we have to live as citizens in our nation, but we have a supra-citizenship, which is our citizenship in heaven, our position in the royal family of God, and our mission as ambassadors to stand up for the truth of God's word and to proclaim the gospel that Jesus Christ has died for mankind. And things may get rugged because that is a That is a message that in some areas, even in Houston, that when that is proclaimed, there is a very harsh and violent reaction. People are more and more willing to react in a very hostile manner to Christians, and so we have to be prepared. Well, we have an illustration in our chapter tonight in 1 Kings 14 of what happens in the way government expands. And there are many different ways in which you can have government expansion. You can have government expansion in the way it took place under monarchy in England, you can have government powers expand in the way they did under Adolf Hitler, or you can have government expansion in the way it's taken place in so-called social democracies in Western Europe or in the United States. Different cultural factors, background features of each group, their history, the personality of each nation, all come to bear on this, plus their own various religious ideas. How this plays out in one culture, one country over another is going to be different, but the underlying principles are the same. And as we go through 1 Kings and 2 Kings, we will see this illustrated again and again and again. Now, as we've seen in the first 11 chapters, 12 chapters actually, of 1 Kings, we have the end of the United Kingdom of Israel. Three kings, Saul, David, and then Solomon, governed during the United Monarchy. The apex of their divine blessing was under Solomon. But just as Solomon took them to the greatest level of blessing and prosperity, they failed the prosperity testing. Solomon personally failed the prosperity testing and led the nation, compromised with evil, compromised with idolatry, and led the nation back into idolatry. And so God brought discipline upon him, and when God gave the report card for Solomon at the end of his reign, Solomon was evil. Here's a writer of scripture, a man who had great doctrine when he was younger, but because of the introduction of idolatry, His report card says evil, and we see the same thing in chapter 14. Chapter 14 tells the story of two Abijahs. The first Abijah is the son of Jeroboam I, who is the king in the northern kingdom, and the second is going to be brought in, actually not until we get to chapter 15, and he's called Abijahm here, but in other passages Abijah, and he is the son of Rehoboam. So 1 Kings 14 tells what happens to these first kings of the divided kingdom, Jeroboam in the north, verses 1 through 20, and Rehoboam in the south, verses 21 down through 31. Now when we look at this passage, and as we go forward in 1 Kings, we're going to see a lot of interesting things, as I pointed out at the beginning, Kings, and all of the history of Israel, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, all of this is a sort of a divine viewpoint editorialized history. It's a divine viewpoint editorialized history, and God is telling us what happened in Israel. He's not telling us everything that happened. This covers a huge number of years, but we don't learn everything. We have almost more questions than we have answers. But what he shows is the key elements that determine the course of Israel's history. Now, unfortunately, when we're sitting here in 2008, observing the presidential election that occurred one week ago, and we observe the trends that have occurred in most of our lifetimes from the time that we might have first began to really look at current events around the mid part, for some of you, maybe the mid part of the 40s or into the World War II era, or maybe just a little before. For others, you didn't wake up to what was going on in the world around you until about five years ago or maybe five weeks ago. But we began to look at all these historical events, but we're looking from a very close perspective. And it's one thing to sit and look at a president in the midst of a presidential election and say, this guy really is sharp. This guy has it together. Let's pin our hopes on him. And then three years later or six years later, you say, man, what a disappointment. And that's because we just can't trust in men. But also because when you're sitting on top of a historical situation, you just don't have the perspective to really see what is going on and understand all of the things that are moving in history. And when I use that term moving in history, I use that, it's an important concept. One of the key elements when you study history itself, the philosophy of history, and every writer of history has a philosophy of history. I'm not talking about somebody who's a chronicler like, for example, Stephen Ambrose did a great job writing. He was more of a chronicler of battles and biographies, battles of World War II, biographies of key people. He's not really a historian in the sense that I'm talking about. A historian would be someone more like an Arnold Toynbee, someone of that nature, Francis Fukuyama, others who are writing, trying to show trends and explain causes and movements and direction of the things that are going on in history. And when you're working at that level, it is, we talk about historiography and one of the key elements that you address in historiography is how does a person view history? Where do they see history going? In Christianity and Christian cultures, history is seen as being linear. That's co-opted by by Marx. Karl Marx has a linear view of history. Hegel had a linear view of history with his thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. But it's going somewhere. It's going forward. Marx is moving towards a worker's paradise. They co-opted that or stole that from Christianity, which has this linear view. But if you look at the ancient Greeks, you look at Hindu views of history, history is just one cycle after another, never-ending cycle. But the Bible tells us that history has a purpose, and history has a direction, and it's following out the plan of God. And so by looking at these historical events and these individuals, we see in the Scripture what God says are the real causative events in history. It's not their economic policy. It's not their philosophy of selection of Supreme Court judges. It's not their policy on the military. It is more fundamental than that. It has to do with their orientation to God, their orientation to creation, and how they orient to God or creation ultimately determines the kinds of decisions they make. So we're talking about this very important religious, we might say, religious or spiritual presupposition that is being brought to the table. That's why, in one sense, it is important for believers to understand the spiritual orientation of a man who's going to lead the country. Because that tells you something about his view of reality and it should tell you something about his view of history. And that is going to shape a lot of decisions that he makes, whether he's conscious of that or not. And many times they are not. And so we come to the events in chapter 14 and we see this working itself out in the life of Jeroboam. Now, as we look at this passage, there's three things we ought to think about in terms of analyzing these events, and we'll think about these as we go through all these circumstances and situations in 1 Kings and 2 Kings. The first is that the framework for this, the framework for understanding the prophets, and by the prophets I mean that in the Jewish canon, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, not Chronicles, Chronicles was part of the writings, were considered the former prophets. They were written by prophets. They are not prophecies or loaded with prophecies like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel are, the twelve, but they were written by the prophets and they're called the former prophets. And the role of the prophet becomes very clear here that he is the one who is challenging the nation on the basis of their obedience or disobedience to the Mosaic Law, and he is the one who brings a message from God in terms of the promise of blessing if they obey, and promise of cursing or discipline if they disobey. So the framework for understanding all of this has to come out of our understanding of the Mosaic Law, the Mosaic Covenant, and foundational to this is going to be the Ten Commandments given in Exodus chapter 20. The second thing that's important for understanding any kind of history, especially when you're dealing with social and political history. are the divine institutions. And we spent a lot of time in the last few weeks with the election special and then previous to that in our study in First Kings on talking about these divine institutions. The first divine institution is individual responsibility. Second divine institution is marriage. Third divine institution is family. These were all prior to the fall. They were designed to promote productivity. in the culture to enable man to fulfill the original mandate that God gave him to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and to subdue the earth, to rule and subdue. But you see, as soon as you make that statement, going back to Genesis 1, 26 and 27, As soon as you make that statement, that immediately puts you in counterpoint with much of the thinking in the culture today. Because in our culture, we live in a world where people don't think man should rule and subdue. In fact, there's a whole movement within the environmentalist camp that view man and human technology as the enemy rather than something that can be positive in their time, certainly cases of much abuse that has taken place in industry and other areas and refusal to have a responsible attitude towards God's creation. Ruling and subduing should always be done responsibly. Any leader who's ruling people should rule responsibly. And when man is ruling over the planet, he should use the resources responsibly. But there's a different framework from a Christian view of the environment and the pagan view of the environment. So those first three divine institutions really focus on individual responsibility and its outworking within the marriage and the family, and the marriage and the family both are viewed as being integral to fulfilling God's original purpose to rule and subdue the planet. and to represent God over his creation. And then the last two divine institutions having to do with human government and nations have to do with institutions that are established by God in order to restrain the evil that is in man's heart. You have God observing mankind just prior to the flood in Genesis chapter 6 saying, the thoughts of man's heart were evil continually. And so, because of that unrestrained evil that dominated the antediluvian or pre-flood culture, God is going to change the terms of the contract again in the Noahic Covenant, Genesis chapter 9, and establish government, and then after the Tower of Babel, establish nations in order to put external controls on man's sin nature. And so part of the role of government and nations is to restrain the evil. Another part is to promote the first three divine institutions which are designed to promote man's productivity. So when we think through the divine institutions and apply that structure, that framework to the events, in Israel's history will see that they fall apart on the fundamentals. And years ago, I talked with a friend of mine who was a star basketball player, and he had spent many years going through various training camps with John Wooten, who is a very famous and successful basketball coach on Southern California. And one day we were talking and I asked him, I said, what is the What is the most significant thing that a basketball player has to know in order to be successful? And he said, never forget the basics. You can learn all kinds of fancy moves and sophisticated strategies out on the basketball court, but it always boils down to just your basic fundamentals. And if you forget that and focus on the fancy stuff, then your whole game will fall apart instantly. And that's what happens in many areas of life. In the Christian life, individuals forget the basics. And in history, we forget the basics. So we'll look at the divine institutions, look at, analyze these events within the framework of the divine institutions, and that'll give us a lot of insight into how to look at our own culture. And then third, we use the framework of the 10 stress busters, because in any good story, and these are great stories in Kings and Chronicles, in any good story, a story turns on conflict. And the hero, who is always God, who resolves the conflict. But another word for conflict is a problem. And so the problem, we identify the conflict in the story, and the problem is always either going to be resolved God's way through the use of one of the ten problem-solving devices or stress busters, or it's going to be handled through arrogance. So in each of these, we'll see illustrations of the arrogant skills at work or the spiritual skills at work. Now, as we look at this chapter, the first 20 verses describe the end of Jeroboam's reign, the end of Jeroboam's reign. And I'm just going to briefly summarize this. The first three verses begin with the identifying the problem, the immediate problem that Jeroboam is facing. There's a broader spiritual problem which has to do with the success of his dynasty and his rule over the northern kingdom of Israel, but the immediate problem that is presented is that his son, Abijah, has become sick. We don't know how old Abijah was. He's young, but later on it refers to him as a child, and the word that's used there in the Hebrew is yelet, which even today is the Hebrew word, modern Hebrew, for child or children, and it can describe an entire range of ages from the time they're just out of infancy up until they are bar mitzvahed at 13. So we don't know whether he was, this is before he has reached an age of accountability or after he's reached an age of accountability or any of those questions. We just know he is, he's young. Those, apparently his age is not important to understand the story. So Abijah is sick. And Jeroboam says to his wife, he's going to send her to Ahijah, the prophet, to find out what is going to happen. And she's supposed to go there in disguise and find out if Abijah is going to live. And he tells her to take 10 loaves, in verse 3, of cakes and a jar of honey. and he'll tell you what will become of the child. This is the heir apparent, the crown prince, and he wants to know if this is going to be the one through whom his dynasty is going to continue. He's worried about the future, and rightly so, because he knows he has disobeyed God. God had given him a promise earlier in chapter 12 that if he would follow him, walk in God's ways as David had, that God would create a dynasty for him just as he had with David. In verse 38 of chapter 11, rather, chapter 11, verse 38, we read, then it shall be, if you heed all that I command you, walk in my ways, do what is right in my sight, keep my statutes and my commandments, that's the Mosaic law, If you keep the law as the ruler of Israel, as you're supposed to, that's your job description, as my servant David did, then I will be with you and build for you an enduring house as I built for David and will give Israel to you. In other words, God is giving him a conditional promise to establish a dynasty through him. What a great potential. But arrogance destroys options. Arrogance destroys potential. And in his arrogance, he has gone out and attempted to establish his own religious, his own religion and he has violated God's law. So now his son is sick and his wife's going to go down and notice here what arrogance does is it uses religion for its own purposes. It uses religion for its own purposes. We see a lot of examples of that among politicians today because we don't have politicians, generally speaking, who have a solid Christian faith, but they know that if you don't have a Christian faith in the United States of America, at least up to this point, it's mattered. that you're not going to get very far, and that's why it didn't take long for Barack Obama to throw Jeremiah Wright under the bus once his Marxist black liberation theology teachings became known, is because he knew that if that connection continued, that he would be dead politically. And so he's using religion for his own purpose. That's why I went to that church to begin with, is because it was considered a key church in that area, that district in Chicago, and he could make context there and use that to promote his political agenda. He may very well not have agreed with anything Wright said. We don't know. We don't have a clue, but he was there to further his own agenda. So just like Jeroboam, he's using religion for his own purposes, and that happens with conservatives and liberals. That is the mode of carnality. So he sends his wife down there, and she heads down, and in verses 4 through 5, as she's headed to seek out Ahijah, God reveals to Ahijah her identity. Because Ahijah is almost blind from cataracts, he can't see, and so her disguise would have certainly been successful. And God reveals to Jeroboam exactly who she is and what the prophecy is. So verses 4-5, Jeroboam's wife goes to Ahijah, and God reveals her identity to him. That's in verses 4 and 5. Now, verse 6 through 14 is the main body of this section. That's one long paragraph. Verses 4 and 5 talk about Jeroboam's wife going to him. Verses 15 to 16, Jeroboam's wife leaves him and goes back home. And so we have something of a chiasm here, although I didn't take the time to chart it out. It's pretty obvious that the center focus here is on what happens in the conversation between Ahijah and Jeroboam's wife. And as she comes in to meet with him, the Lord communicates to Ahijah, identifies her. In verse 6, when Ahijah heard the sound of her footsteps, he says, come in, wife of Jeroboam, why do you pretend to be someone else? And then in verse 7 he gives her the message that she's supposed to take back to Jeroboam from the Lord. Notice he prefaces it with the phrase, thus says the Lord God of Israel. A key element. Pay attention to this. A key element in this passage has to do with the authority and the infallibility of God's Word. Number one, it is the Lord speaking. Again and again and again as we go through Scripture we have this phrase, thus saith the Lord. The writers of Scripture knew they weren't speaking from themselves, they were speaking under the authority of God and by virtue of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is not his word, and he is speaking for the Lord, and thus he has to come under the two tests which we saw last time for a prophet. In Deuteronomy 13 and in Deuteronomy 18, there are two tests that we should use if anybody claims to be proclaiming God's word. The first test is that whatever is claimed to be God's word needs to be consistent with accepted, validated previous revelation. So it doesn't matter what kind of miracles they perform, what kind of healings they have, no matter how legitimate those might be, if the message doesn't fit the text, then reject them. It doesn't have anything to do whether it's a false miracle or a true miracle. That's not the issue. The issue is always the content of the message. And then the second test is in Deuteronomy chapter 18, that whatever was prophesied, whatever was said to come, be fulfilled in the future, had to be fulfilled 100% of the time. You couldn't have a 98% success ratio or 99% success ratio. It had to be 100% or the penalty was death. If there was a false prophet, he was to die because no one is to speak for God other than God himself. And so this is designed to protect the people, a focus again on the innocent and not the guilty. And of course, there's a great principle there in terms of the application of law. Too often when people are concerned about various government policies, their focus is on protecting the wrong group of people, protecting the criminal, or protecting someone who is engaged in irresponsible behavior rather than in protecting those who are their victims. Now the key issue in this whole analysis of Ahijah's boils down to Jeroboam's idolatry. The judgment is said to be idolatry. Verse 7 is a reminder that God is the one who raised up Jeroboam. God is the one, verse 8, who tore the kingdom away from David and gave it to Jeroboam. God is the one who promised that if Jeroboam was obedient, then God is the one who would exalt him. Remember that men labor in vain to build a house unless the Lord builds it. And so we always have to remember to relax in the Lord and let Him be the one to be in control. But the challenge is, verse 9, but you have done more evil than all who were before you. Now notice how evil is defined in this statement. We think of evil too often as some sort of political position, or certain kinds of criminality, or certain kinds of sexual perversion. But the Bible defines evil at its starting point, which is the rejection of God. And you go back and you read the first two commandments and the ten commandments focus on that foundation, that you will have no other God before me and you won't make any idols and worship them, because once that's gone, everything else that is built upon that collapses. Once a culture loses that eternal, infinite, absolute reference point, then everything becomes relative. So, Jeroboam has violated that, has done evil more than all before you, for you have gone and made for yourself other gods and molded images to provoke me to anger and have cast me behind your back. Therefore, behold, I will bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. The promise? was if you obey me, I will make a house for you. If you disobey me now, I will bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. Cut off from Jeroboam every male, so it ends the line. Every male, every cousin, every distant cousin, every son, they're all going to die. But it's not just that they're going to die. It's going to be a horrible death and a death that shows that they are not valued or respected at all because God says, They are going to die, and if they die in the city, the dogs will eat them. There's no burial. See, this time, Israel, the Jews were very, had their procedures for burying those who died. And so this is a sign of disrespect and dishonor and also chaos that no one is taking care of the dead. If it's in the city, the dogs will eat them, and if they die out in the field, then the birds will eat them. So he announces judgment on the house of Jeroboam because that's what Jeroboam's real concern is. Am I going to have a dynasty? Is this boy going to live? And then God answers the specific question in verse 12 that you, now what a judgment on a mother. What a judgment. How would you handle that? You're a mother and you're told that when you Your foot enters into the door of your house, your child's going to die instantly. Will you move in next door? Did she, you know, I've often wondered, did she take her time going home? Did she wander this way, wander that way? What did she do? Well, we're not told any of those because ultimately they don't matter. The issue is she went home and instantly the child died. But, it's very interesting what God says in verse 13. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he is the only one of Jeroboam who shall come to the grave. He's the only one who will be buried respectfully, because in him there is found something good toward the Lord God of Israel and the house of Jeroboam. The reason, I think number one, the reason this child is going to die is because all potential heirs have to die because Jeroboam's line is ending under divine discipline. But there's something about this one son that something good was seen in him. And I believe that this child was part of all the house, this was probably the only one positive, And the reason that this child is, I think another reason this child is going to die is because if this child had lived, his impact spiritually on the nation would have been positive and God was judging the nation and was not going to allow that to happen. See, we don't think like that. We think, well, why doesn't God raise up a good leader to challenge the direction of the country? Well, because God doesn't want that direction challenged because we are already under judgment as a culture, as I pointed out before. And so God's not going to raise up that kind of a leader, allow that kind of person to come on the scene. The next verse, verse 14, concludes this section that the Lord, with the promise of the Lord, will raise up another king, establish another dynasty who will cut off the house of Jeroboam. And then in 15, 15 and 16, we have another statement that God will eventually, not only is he going to judge Jeroboam now, but eventually he's going to, because of the sin of Jeroboam, he will eventually judge the northern kingdom, take them out of the land and scatter them beyond the Euphrates. The Euphrates River is the border over with Iraq, and he's going to scatter them to Assyria, Babylon, in the ancient world. And in verses 17 and 18, then, Hyde's wife returns home, and the child dies, and they mourn for him. And then we just get the conclusion on Jeroboam's life. Verse 19, Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he made war and how he reigned, Indeed, they are written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. Now, that's not 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles. This is a non-extant work that was just a record of the rules of the kings of Judah and Israel. And we don't have a copy of that. They did at that time. They did probably after the exile, but it did not survive. And so we don't know what was in it. But it does show that the writers of scripture utilized historical sources and contemporary records in order to compile their accounts, because under the leadership of God, the Holy Spirit, they would pick and choose the correct information and interpret it correctly. Verse 20 we read the period that Jeroboam reigned was 22 years. So he rested with his fathers. So for 22 years there was a lot that went on during that time other than what we were told about. What we were told about is what was crucial. And the first thing that we're told about with Jeroboam is his realization that he can't have a successful autonomous nation in the north if his people are going down to Jerusalem to worship God. So the first thing that he did was to invent his own religious system, invent his own religion in order to get the people to stay in the north. And this was a failure personally, because he failed spiritually in his own relationship with God, which would result in bringing divine discipline upon himself. And that relates to the first divine institution of individual responsibility. Leaders are individually responsible for their own spiritual life and their own walk with the Lord. And if their spiritual life leads them astray, then it can, it doesn't necessarily have to, but it can then impact their leadership of the entire nation. So the first thing that we note is that in terms of divine institution, number one, Jeroboam fails in his personal responsibility in his own relationship with the Lord. And then secondly, as a leader, as the anointed leader over God's people, he leads them in rebellion against God. And if we go back to Exodus chapter 20, You can turn with me if you want to. I'll just make a couple of observations there. Exodus chapter 20 begins with the Ten Commandments. This is the preamble to the Mosaic Law, the Mosaic Covenant. Verse 1, then God spoke all these words saying, what was the first thing God said? I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of slavery. That's how he identifies himself. The first thing is that he is the God who brought you out of slavery, out of Egypt. Now, what happens with Jeroboam is he is going to establish this alternate religion, and he makes two golden calves. And what does he say about them in chapter 12, verse 28? He says, after he has the golden calves, he says to the people, it's too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here's your gods. O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt." So he is directly challenging what God said in the Mosaic Law, and he is violating the foundation of all of Israel's culture, religion, and government. by rejecting God at the foundation. This is what was so terrible about Jeroboam's sin and why it has such a terrible effect upon the entire nation. So when we evaluate this in terms of first divine institution, he fails spiritually in his own walk with the Lord, he fails as a spiritual leader and political leader who's to uphold the law. It is the law that rules Israel, not not Jeroboam, in the same way in our nation. That's where we got this idea in the early Puritans who were here. It is the law that rules, people who govern simply govern, they don't rule. Contrary to one of our president-elect's advisors, who was being interviewed on one of the major channels yesterday morning, had, let's hope it was not a Freudian slip or slip of the tongue, but she said, well, when President-elect Obama begins to rule in January. You know, it's all these little things like that that's what causes people who are thinking to be concerned. It's not that there's one misspoken word here or another there. There's just there's a whole lot of these kinds of things, things that are clearly overtly said and things that aren't. And so we wonder what in the world is going on. But in this country, our history is that we are governed by presidents and by mayors and governors, but we are ruled by law. And that's the way it was in ancient Israel. They were ruled by the law. And so he is attacking the very foundation of that rule. Much like you have many politicians and lawyers and jurists today who say that the Constitution is a living document and it needs to be reevaluated in every generation because we don't need to interpret it in the original intent of the founders. So that is again a basic attack on the Constitution just as this is a basic attack on the Constitution of Israel. In terms of his marriage, divine institution number two, marriage, rather than being a courageous, bold leader, because he knows he's guilty in his heart, he knows he's violated God's will, he sends his wife to go talk to the preacher. He won't go do it himself. I'm being a little facetious there. Now, he won't go talk to Ahijah himself. He sends his wife to do it, so that shows a lack of moral courage in his marriage. Fourth, in terms of family, because he led his family like the nation into idolatry, the family is going to suffer just as much as he does. All of the males in the family are going to be wiped out in an ignominious manner. except for a hija and he will die, but God will allow him to be buried as a sign of honor that there was something unique about him, that there was something good in his heart toward the Lord. Then in terms of the divine institution, number four, the government. He further shows the accuracy of Samuel's warnings, God's warnings in 1 Samuel chapter 8, that the king wants to accrue power to himself. And the more he wants to accrue power to himself, what could be more powerful than defining, redefining a nation's religion, redefining their God? The more that a government takes on power for itself, the more the government expands the more freedom and liberty is lost and the more the culture collapses. And so he is instrumental in that and eventually will bring about divine discipline. And then there's really not an application in this related to the last divine institution of national distinction. And then we looked at the other aspect in terms of the arrogant skills. I just have a slide up here. The arrogant skills begin with self-absorption. We are focused on me. It's narcissism. It is, I'm going to do what I want to do to fulfill my power lust, my approbation lust, my sex lust, whatever it is. It is self-absorption, which develops into self-indulgence. And then self-indulgence then leads to self-justification. There's a great article going around the internet right now that analyzes narcissism in political leaders, and it relates to the fact that Adolf Hitler when he was young and was put into jail after the putsch in Munich wrote his autobiography. He's so self-absorbed. That's typical of leaders. They want to write all about themselves and justify all of their actions. And then this leads to self-deception, and if they're charismatic, they not only can deceive themselves, but deceive those who follow them, and then this leads to self-deification. It happens on the individual scale all the time. This is what happens with most unbelievers and many believers, is that, especially in a narcissistic culture, like the one in which we live, we're so focused on our own personal needs and desires that we can't ever get above that for any level of objectivity in a relationship with the Lord. So, the result of this is that Jeroboam gets graded with the big E for evil, because he has led the people into idolatry. Now next time we'll come back to the second half of the chapter, beginning in verse 21, we'll look at the summary of Rehoboam's reign. We talked about this a little bit already, so we won't spend a lot of time on him. And we'll go down to look at the, actually the next two kings, Bijim in chapter 15 and Asa in the second part of chapter 15, beginning in verse 9. So we'll look at the first three kings of Judah next time, following their, looking at their pattern. Again, we're going to see the same kind of thing taking place. Abijam is going to, again, he's going to walk in the sins of his father in 15-3, because his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, but his son Asa Asa will be a good king and he will do what is right in the eyes of the Lord as does his father. So we'll see that contrast between an evil king and a good king in Judah next time. Let's bow our heads and close in prayer. Father, we're thankful that we get the opportunity to look at these negative pictures, what happens in under arrogance in leaders, but as goes a nation, so go the leaders. The leaders are simply a more clear picture of what is going on within the people, within the culture. And just as Jeroboam manifested all these traits, so did most of those who were living in the northern kingdom. And the same thing happens in our nation, Father, and we just pray that those who know the truth, those who proclaim the truth of your word would not be intimidated. would not lack courage, but we would fearlessly, in kindness and in love, proclaim the truth of your word, that we might be a shining light in the midst of the darkness that continues to increase around us. And Father, we know that this is the task that you've called us to, and that we are ambassadors to a fallen and lost world, and that this is just a glorious privilege that we can serve you in this way. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.