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1 Kings 1, and you might wonder
why I'm going to be reading the name Jehovah three syllables
rather than Yahweh two syllables. Well, I've always been skeptical
of the establishment position on that name, especially since
every time the word Jehovah occurs in the Hebrew, it's Jehovah,
or Yehowah if you want to do it the Hebrew not Yahweh and
it's a pretty long convoluted arguments as to why they came
up with that but I've got a paper if you're curious in reading
that. I am going to back up just a little bit more than what's
in the bulletin and start reading in context at verse 5. Then Adonijah the son of Haggath
exalted himself saying I will be king And he prepared for himself
chariots and horsemen and 50 men to run before him. And his
father had not rebuked him at any time by saying, why have
you done so? He was also very good looking.
His mother had borne him after Absalom. Then he conferred with
Joab, the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar, the priest. And
they followed and helped Adonijah. But Zadok, the priest, Benaiah,
the son of Jehoiada, Nathan, the prophet, Shimei, Ray, and
the mighty men who belonged to David were not with Adonijah. And Adonijah sacrificed sheep
and oxen and fattened cattle by the stone of Zoheleth, which
is by Enrogel. He also invited all his brothers,
the king's sons, and all the men of Judah, the king's servants,
but he did not invite Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the mighty,
Benaiah, the mighty men, or Solomon, his brother. So Nathan spoke
to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, saying, have you not heard that
Adonijah, the son of Haggith, has become king? And David, our
Lord, does not know it. Come, please, let me now give
you advice that you may save your own life and the life of
your son Solomon. Go immediately to King David
and say to him, did you not, my Lord, O King, swear to your
maidservant saying, assuredly your son Solomon shall reign
after me and he shall sit on my throne? Why then has Adonijah
become king? Then while you are still talking
there with the king, I also will come in after you and confirm
your words. So Bathsheba went into the chamber
to the king. Now the king was very old and
Abishag, the Shunammite, was serving the king. And Bathsheba
bowed and did homage to the king. Then the king said, what is your
wish? Then she said to him, my lord,
you swore by Jehovah your God to your maidservant saying, assuredly,
Solomon, your son shall reign after me and he shall sit on
my throne. So now look, Adonijah has become
king. And now my Lord the King, you
do not know about it. He has sacrificed oxen and fattened
cattle and sheep in abundance and has invited all the sons
of the King, Abiathar the priest and Joab the commander of the
army, but Solomon, your servant, he has not invited. And as for
you, my Lord, O King, the eyes of all Israel are on you that
you should tell them who will sit on the throne of my Lord
the King after him. Otherwise it will happen. When
my Lord the King rests with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon
will be counted as offenders. And just then while she was still
talking with the King, Nathan the prophet also came in. So
they told the King saying, here is Nathan the prophet. And when
he came in before the King, he bowed down before the King with
his face to the ground. And Nathan said, my Lord, O King,
have you said Adonijah shall reign after me and he shall sit
on my throne? For he has gone down today, and
has sacrificed oxen, and fattened cattle, and sheep in abundance,
and has invited all the king's sons, and the commanders of the
army, and Abiathar the priest. And look, they're eating and
drinking before him, and they say, Long live King Adonijah. But he has not invited me, me
your servant." nor Zadok the priest, nor Benaiah the son of
Jehoiada, nor your servant Solomon. Has this thing been done by my
Lord the King and you have not told your servant who should
sit on the throne of my Lord the King after him?" Then King
David answered and said, "'Call Bathsheba to me.' So she came
into the king's presence and stood before the king and the
king took an oath and said, As Jehovah lives, who has redeemed
my life from every distress, just as I swore to you by Jehovah,
God of Israel, saying assuredly Solomon, your son shall be king
after me and he shall sit on my throne in my place. So I certainly
will do this day. Then Bathsheba bow with her face
to the earth and paid homage to the king and said, let my
Lord King David live forever. And King David said, call to
me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son
of Jehoiada. So they came before the king.
The king also said to them, take with you the servants of your
Lord and have Solomon my son ride on my own mule and take
him down to Gihon. There let Zadok the priest and
Nathan the prophet anoint him king over Israel and blow the
horn and say, long live King Solomon. Then you shall come
up after him, and he shall come and sit on my throne, and he
shall be king in my place. For I have appointed him to be
ruler over Israel and Judah. Benaiah, the son of Jehoiad,
I answered the king and said, Amen. May Jehovah, God of my
Lord the king, say so too. As Jehovah has been with my Lord
the king, even so may he be with Solomon, and make his throne
greater than the throne of my Lord King David. So Zadok the
priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the Cherithites
and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on King
David's mule and took him to Gihon. Then Zadok the priest
took a horn of oil from the tabernacle and anointed Solomon and they
blew the horn and all the people said, long live King Solomon. and all the people went up after
Him, and the people played the flutes and rejoiced with great
joy, so that the earth seemed to split with their sound. Amen. Father God, we thank You for
Your Word, and it is our desire to honor You, to please You with
the responses that we have to it. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, last week I examined verses
5 through 10 with primarily making applications
to family. And it was titled Camouflage
Sin, and that's a pretty scary case for the general way that
sin is at work. But the primary message of this
whole chapter is political. Yes, there is family involved,
the family of David, and so it was legitimate for making applications
last week. But it's a political chapter,
and today I want to apply the same section to conspiracies
in civil government. That will be point number one.
And then the second and third points will bring the encouraging
news that our God is a conspiracy buster. Now when I say a conspiracy
buster, I do not mean that God disproves conspiracies and says
there's no such thing as conspiracies. On the contrary, I mean by God
being a conspiracy buster, that God scoffs at conspiracies. He exposes their secret meetings. He frustrates their purposes.
Psalm 2, which we're going to be singing immediately after
the sermon, makes clear that conspiracies have always existed
and yet Christ will triumph over them. And I love what Gary North
wrote in his book, Conspiracy, A Biblical View. He wrote, there
have been many conspiracies in history, A few gain power for
a while, most of them lose from the beginning. These conspiracies
have a model, the satanic conspiracy against God. They rely on secrecy
covered in a shell of public positioning. They promote hidden
agendas. They all lose. One by one, they
all lose. This is why Isaiah warned God's
people You're not to say, it is a conspiracy in regard to
all that those people call a conspiracy. And you're not to fear what they
fear or be in dread of it. It is the Lord of hosts whom
you should regard as holy and he shall be your fear and he
shall be your dread. And I say, amen. I say amen to
the idea that there are many conspiracies. It could not be
otherwise if Satan truly is at war against God. I mean, he's
in this cosmic battle for planet Earth, desperately trying to
retain whatever kind of control that he can. And Christ is resting
nation after nation, family after family out of his grip. So it
could not be otherwise. But I say amen to the idea as
well that all eventually fail in light of the fact that Jesus
is sitting on his throne and he has been given all authority
in heaven and on earth. In fact, he even causes the wrath
of man to praise him. You see, Jesus can use Satan's
actions against Satan's kingdom, just like in the book of Esther.
You remember how Haman pretty much had his ways, but it ended
up that the very gallows that Haman had used to hang Mordecai
were used to hang Haman. And Jesus uses humanistic conspiracies
to thwart other humanistic conspiracies. And for that matter, he uses
conspiracies to discipline and motivate the church and to keep
the church from longing for the approval of the world. But the
thesis of Psalm 2 is that all conspiracies against Christ and
His kingdom will eventually fail. And the main thesis of 1 Kings
1 is that God is in the conspiracy-busting business. So even though from
a human perspective, we should be concerned about conspiracies,
they're dangerous, they can't be ignored, yet from God's perspective,
they're so easily exposed and destroyed, just as Adonijah's
conspiracy was exposed and destroyed. So let's start by highlighting
some of the characteristics of the conspiracies that have existed
over the past several thousand years. First of all, we see pride
in verse five. Then Adonijah the son of Haggith
exalted himself. Now almost all conspirators are
impatient with God's process of leadership through service,
through humble service. They exalt themselves. They do
not have the patience of David. You see, David refused to take
the throne even though God had anointed him until the people
were ready to put him on the throne. And the people were ready
to put him on the throne when they saw for years he had been
so selflessly sacrificing, so selflessly and humbly serving. So David served, and I believe
it is imperative that we not respond to the conspiracies in
our culture and their prideful arrogance in like-minded pride. Gary North, toward the end of
his book, gives some extremely wise advice to those who want
to expose the evils in our national civil government. And he warns
us, do not use the same prideful means that the conspirators do. He wrote, the principle of localism
is fundamental. It has been the suicidal urge
of political conservatives to focus on the big issues at the
national level where their nearly invisible political opponents
have long since mastered the art of deception. What we need
is to develop skills on the local level before we can hope to defeat
our opponents nationally. The county courthouse, the local
school board, the city council, here are our initial targets.
If we cannot win here, why should we expect to win nationally?
Is it pride, which motivates good people with minimal skills
to seek the highest offices first? The biblical principle of authority
is clear. Success first in the family,
then in the church, then in civil and social affairs. Success in
the little things of life is to precede any attempts to master
the big things of life. Now, I don't think I need to
delve into that point any further. I think it should be fairly straightforward
that Satan, whose chief sin was pride, is going to motivate leaders
to prideful self-advancement, whereas God the Holy Spirit,
whose chief leading characteristic is to point to Jesus, would motivate
leaders to humility and service. And it's really a rare thing
to find in politics. Next we see power. Verse 5 quotes
Adonijah saying, I will be king. And this drive to power can be
seen in every form of conspiracy. Sometimes it's hidden, camouflaged. The wife who is like Jezebel
may look like she is serving her husband, but her goal is
to control her husband. And if possible, to control the
agencies her husband sits on through her husband. And it's
a different manifestation of power, but it's still an issue
of power. And then husbands who are like Ahab may look like they're
henpecked husbands who have no power, but it's really not the
case. They give in because they know
what it takes to feel like a man, to feel like they're in positions
of power. Ahab really got his way by pleasing
others or manipulating others, but it's still an issue of power. Let me give you a couple of other
examples. When the Church of Scientology
engaged in all kinds of criminal behavior to intimidate, discredit,
and even attempt to assassinate their chief critic, Paulette
Cooper, it was an issue of power. Everything about Operation Daniel,
Operation Dynamite, and Operation Freakout are related to power. They were exposed by the FBI. The propaganda about the second
supposed incident in the Gulf of Tonkin was engaged in because
President Lyndon Johnson did not have the votes and he did
not have the public sentiment to be able to go into war in
Vietnam. You see, the issues, the ultimate
outcomes may be different, but conspiracies are almost always
a quest for some kind of power and control. Gary North wrote,
It has been the essence of conspiracies throughout history to substitute
power for ethics and to substitute unrestricted power for limited
authority. If one word summarizes the conspiratorial
program, it is this one, centralization. In all things, the state is to
be the preeminent power, the initiating agency, as well as
the final court of appeal. And I'm not gonna take the time
to look at every issue that I've listed for you there in your
outlines, but I think if you study those verses that I've
given, you will see these common things that you read about in
conspiracies down through history, you'll see them here. For example,
just as Absalom manipulated people over a period of time to get
their support, Adonijah does exactly the same thing in verse
five. Likewise, verse six, shows Adonijah using the very system
that had benefited him to try to promote his conspiracy. And
you see that in the phrase, and his father, which of course relates
to David. If it had not been for David's
sacrifices, Adonijah would be nowhere. He would not have the
resources, the influence, the position to have even been able
to attempt to overthrow his dad. And it's frustrating that those
who have succeeded in overthrowing America's Christian roots and
constitution have done so because they've benefited from the very
freedoms that constitution and biblical law have given to them.
They have done this over and over, and yet virtually all conspiracies,
including those within the family, like Jezebel, use the very system
that has benefited them to try to gain control. As Gary North
words it, this is a conspiracy of insiders against outsiders,
not the other way around. And you can look at the other
points in your outline. You can see that this conspiracy really
does parallel the other conspiracies in history. Uh, there was a misuse
of liberty. But Nathan points out in verse
11, Adonijah is not planning to give Solomon and Bathsheba
and David and any of the other people that are in that tight
circle. He's not planning to give them
the same liberty. No way. He's planning to kill them. And
you see this issue over and over again. Solomon's willing to have
mercy. Adonijah would not have had mercy.
The GLBT conspiracy in America has used Christian freedoms and
liberties to get into power, and the moment they get into
power in any city council or any state, in the name of tolerance,
they absolutely will not tolerate us. You see it in conspiracy
after conspiracy. You see in Adonijah's conspiracy
that charisma, attractiveness, other veneer issues camouflage
the ugly dangers underneath. So verse five says he was also
very good looking. Now conspiracies ordinarily are
not gonna put forward their most ugly person. Maybe Bela Abzug
of the ERA might be a possible exception, but normally they're
gonna put the most good looking people forward. They're going
to at least have a spokesman that will make it look a little
bit better for them. Like other conspiracies, this
one was pursued by an insider with other insiders. And Gary
North has a lot to say about that in his book. Obviously,
Adonijah was an insider working with other insiders. In verse
7, you see secrecy. I'll spend a little bit more
time on this point because that's really at the essence of these
conspiracies. Later in the chapter, you discover
that David didn't have a clue of what was happening. Verse
7. Then he conferred with Joab the
son of Zeruiah and with Abiathar the priest, and they followed
and helped Adonijah." They were the brains behind this operation,
okay? So they know certain things that
they cannot communicate to the populace. And North points out
that, quote, conspiracies rely on secrecy covered in a shell
of public positioning. I saw that in our former denomination. We conservatives, we would have
planning meetings just like the progressives did, but we conservatives
always had open public meetings to which anyone was welcome,
whereas the progressives who were taking over the denomination
always had secret caucuses to which only people who were specifically
invited were welcome. Now contrast that with the actions
of Jesus. Jesus said, in secret I have
said nothing. In secret I have said nothing.
That's in John 18. So the Gospels portray the open
ministry of Jesus versus the secret conspiracies of the Jewish
leadership. And Jesus called his disciples
to imitate him to have a very open policy of being a light,
not hidden under a bushel, a light that everybody could see, to
be a city set on a hill, not hidden in a valley, set on a
hill. He was advocating an open sunshine kind of a policy, not
the backroom deals that go on in both dominant political parties. Gary North said, a war is in
progress. It is a war between light and darkness, truth and
falsehood, ethics and power. It is also a war between two
conflicting strategies, visible proclamation versus secret organization,
public representation versus secret initiation. This war has
been going on from the beginning, or at least one week after the
beginning, It has been going on in human history since the
serpent tempted Eve. Secrecy. Now, of course, not
every aspect of a conspiracy can be secret or you wouldn't
have very many followers. We already saw that Adonijah
tested the waters with some public displays that really only a king
should be involved in. And you might wonder, why would
he show his hand by having these chariots and these horsemen and,
you know, these 50 runners in front of him? He's obviously
showing that he's got aspirations to do something there. Well,
he's, we saw last week, testing the waters, but he's also wanting
to attract followers who might side with him. So not everything
he did was secret. Now the question is, is that
a contradiction? And the answer is absolutely
no. This is the way conspiracies have almost always worked. Gary
North again. The conspirators always keep
their program of long-term convergence relatively quiet. I say relatively. Since 1973, the Trilateral Commission
has published its intention repeatedly to create a new world order.
Doesn't this refute my contention that they are a conspiracy? Aren't
all conspiracies always completely secret? No, they aren't. Adam
Weishaupt's Illuminati were almost entirely secret, but as time
goes on, the conspirators have become more open, especially
the conspirators by execution. Hitler published Mein Kampf.
Lenin published his intentions repeatedly. True, they did not
announce their intention to liquidate specific numbers of specific
groups, but they announced their general intentions. But hardly
anyone in power believed them. Why not? Because the conspirators
by manipulation always said that these were just verbal excesses.
They really didn't mean it, so let's make a deal. But aren't
all conspiracies through manipulation always secret all the time? No,
they aren't. They are secret about some things.
They were secret about the real intentions of the Federal Reserve
System before it was voted into law in 1913. They were secret
about the real intentions of the Federal Income Tax before
it was voted into law, or more accurately, before voters were
told that it had been voted into law in 1913. But some of their
program has always been public. Their helpful guys image is carefully
maintained. Nevertheless, prior to Dan Smoot's
invisible government, 1962, the CFR kept an incredibly low profile. And the same has been true of
virtually every conspiracy that I've studied in American history. George Grant, I think, has a
wonderful book exposing Planned Parenthood's you know, secret
meetings where eugenics was going to be used to try to get rid
of the blacks and get rid of minorities, and then contrasting
those secret meetings with what they put out as a public face. And that was radical enough,
what they put out in public, but it made them popular. And
I think it parallels in some ways what was secret and what
was public with Adonijah. Adonijah was not about to tell
everybody that he has plans to kill his dad and to kill his
brother Solomon and Bathsheba and a few other people. I mean,
that would not sit very well with the public. And so he tells
Joab and Abiathar what they need to hear in order for him to succeed,
but he tells the public what they want to hear. The ACLU too
has had secret meetings for many things and then very public meetings
on other issues. Years ago, I had a friend who
was a mole in the American Humanist Association, and he would secretly
tape record all of the meetings. And I've listened to those tapes.
They are one of the most fascinating insights onto the secret meetings
that go on, and then contrast that with the public meetings
that the Humanist Association had. And actually, in one of
those tapes, And I think I've mentioned this to you many, many
years ago. Very encouraging to me because
they said the most dangerous Christians in America, and this
was back at the moral majority, they said, you don't need to
worry about the moral majority. Yeah, they're popular right now. They're
gonna fail. And he talked about the various groups. He said,
the people that you need to fear are the Reformed Reconstructionists
because they've got an absolute objective standard in the law
of God. They've got an optimistic view
about the future, and that's going to make them relentless
in pursuing their goals. They're putting their plans to
action. And so they said that we are
the most dangerous. They were very discouraged in
this meeting. We are the most dangerous people. And I'm thinking
to myself, here we are, such a tiny minority, almost no Christians
have heard of us. But these guys had, and they
said in that meeting that they have to discredit us, they have
to undermine us, they have to infiltrate, they have to do everything
they can in the churches, in the civil government, in the
media to discredit and put down the Reconstructionists. And they've
been hard at work doing that for the last 30 years since I
listened to that tape. But they also talked about what
they should publicly disseminate in order to advance the cause
of humanism and what things they had to keep secret. You see the
same things in the GLBT community and other conspiracies against
Christ. They've had this division between
public statements, and they're often radical enough, and then
the secret books and agendas that would have been Too radical
for people in the sixties to have been comfortable with. And
the success of these secret conspiracies has been very, very frustrating
to American Christians and conservatives. And if you're one of those people
who has been frustrated at how they've taken over America, how
in the world could this be possible? I think you'll find the rest
of this sermon to be very, very encouraging. The rest of this
chapter. What we're gonna be seeing today is that God is in
the business of busting conspiracies. He does so providentially, that'll
be point number three. But he also does so by directly
working in their lives by the Holy Spirit. Verse 11 says, so
Nathan spoke to Bathsheba. Nathan is a tool in God's hand
of providence, and we'll look at him under point number three. But I want to look behind him
at what the Holy Spirit is doing. The Holy Spirit has sent Nathan
the prophet to David. Why has He sent him? Now previously
the Holy Spirit had sent Nathan the prophet to expose sins in
David's life. And as frequently as the Holy
Spirit exposes sin in your life and in my life, you might get
the impression the only sins that the Holy Spirit's concerned
about are exposing sins in His own people. Well, yeah, He is
faithful to do that to us, but I want to read you a passage
that shows one of the main purposes of the Holy Spirit from the time
of Pentecost and on. John 16 and verses 6 through
11 say this, But because I have said these things to you, sorrow
has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the
truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not
go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I depart,
I will send him to you. And when he has come, he will
convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.
Of sin, because they do not believe in me. Of righteousness, because
I go to my father and you see me no more. Of judgment, because
the ruler of this world is judged. The Holy Spirit exposes sin. And in that context, He is called
our helper, which implies we too are called to expose sin
in the world. So there's a connection between
points two and point three, where God's people are involved and
He providentially uses them. But don't forget that it was
God who sent Nathan. King Jesus is taking over this
world, and one of the functions of the Holy Spirit is to expose
any sins that might frustrate Christ's purpose. And this is
one of the things we can be praying for, that the Holy Spirit would
expose evil as evil, just like He did in the book of Esther.
You know, in that book, Haman gives his plan to the emperor,
and the emperor thinks, okay, that's a great deal. He didn't
have any problems with Haman opposing. Christians. He didn't really know what was
going on. But then overnight, Haman gets exposed for being
an absolute wretch, absolutely evil kind of a person. He's discredited. God is in the
business of exposing what Satan doesn't want exposed. And if
you have not read the book of Esther, you absolutely need to.
It's one of the funnest stories in the whole Bible. And I think
it's a great, great book on understanding God's providence. Anyway, Jesus
warned His disciples, therefore whatever you have spoken in the
dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the
ear, in inner rooms, will be proclaimed on the housetops.
That's Luke 12 verse 3. Now he's not talking about the
final day of judgment. He is talking about exposing
sin to the public from house stops. So the house stops are
still around when there's this talking. It's not the end of
history. He's talking about the Holy Spirit's work in history.
And the point is that there is no conspiracy so powerful It's
so powerful that the Holy Spirit cannot expose it. There is no
secret so deep that the Holy Spirit cannot dig it up. You
know, Moses told the leaders who thought they were getting
away with their sin, he told them, be sure your sin will find
you out. In Isaiah 28, Isaiah talks about
the leaders of that day who were in civic office and thought that
they were getting away with high crimes, that that is not what
is happening. Not at all. God was using them
for a purpose, for a time, and the citizens were shaking their
heads. They were frustrated because it seemed like these civil leaders
are just getting away with anything. They can get away with murder
even, and nothing is happening to them. Had a hard time exposing
these sins in high places. And anyway, Isaiah summarizes
the confident attitude of those wicked government officials where
they said, we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood,
we have hidden ourselves. They too thought the public could
never expose them. Just as it now seems impossible
to take conspirators down in Washington, D.C., to Isaiah's
contemporaries, it seemed impossible to take down conspirators who
were hiding behind their lies. But God assures the populace
of that day that even powerful conspiracies in government cannot
remain secret forever. Who would have thought that Snowden
would expose the things that he exposed? Who would have thought
that other leaks in government from whatever source would have
taken down some pretty powerful leaders in the past? Anyway,
in verse 18 of Isaiah 28, God uses a metaphor for what's going
to shortly happen to those conspirators in government. He said, the hail
will sweep away the refuge of lies and the waters will overflow
the hiding place. Yeah, they're hiding behind these
lies. He says, I'll just take it all away, take their refuge
away. And so the most important point of this whole story is
the story behind the story. The story of God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit advancing the Davidic
Kingdom, which is a type, a picture of the Messianic Kingdom of Christ.
You see, Solomon has to get into power because he's going to be
a symbol, a type of glories in the future that we've not even
yet experienced. of peace on earth and of worldwide
dominion. And so there is no conspiracy
that's going to be able to stop Solomon from getting on the throne. And part of the Holy Spirit's
work today is to expose sin and rebellion wherever such sin and
rebellion will hinder the advance of Christ's kingdom. God did it through providence
and through his people. And this is Roman numeral three.
God often uses tools to engage in conspiracy busting. And Nathan
the prophet was the first tool in God's hands. So verse 11, so Nathan spoke to Bathsheba,
the mother of Solomon saying, have you not heard that Adonijah,
the son of Haggith has become king and David, our Lord does
not know it. Where did Nathan even find out
about this advice? I've assumed, but can't prove
it. I've assumed that the spirit
revealed it to him, but he could have just been told it. You know,
perhaps he had received a Snowden type leak of the scandal and
he immediately acts. Every action of verses 1 through
49 had to be decisive and quick. There could be no hesitation.
But the focus of our passage, interestingly, is not upon how
he got that information, but on the fact that even Nathan,
a prophet, did not take a hands-off, you know, church camp metal and
political affairs, did not take a hands-off. No, he had to be
involved. Nathan finds out about a political conspiracy. He immediately
does something about it. And I wish that pastors today
would act as decisively in writing letters and making phone calls
and instructing and doing everything that they can to expose the Adonijahs
of our day. There was a time when there were
thousands of pastors in the black robe regiment. Now it was called
a black robe regiment because the pastors back then wore these
black robes. I always thought they're cool,
but people would think I'm weird if I wore one of them. But these
were not, these were the Geneva gowns. These were not the priestly
robes that were worn in the Roman Catholic Church, which were white.
These were the robes of scholars, the robes of teachers. And back
then, The preachers knew enough about scripture and about politics
to be worth listening to as teachers. Okay, they had a lot of advice
to give. Preachers once knew how to apply
the whole counsel of God to the whole of life. And until the
church becomes informed in what the whole Bible says to the whole
of life, and until ministers begin to become salt and light
to our society once again, the Adonijah conspiracies will continue
to prevail. But I believe even though we're
small in number today, all it takes is one black-robed regiment
preacher Providentially by the Holy Spirit connected to one
person of influence and a world of trouble in America might be
able to be averted. And of course Bathsheba was a
woman of great influence in David's life and so it's providentially
a good thing Nathan was able to connect with her. He tells
her, come please, let me now give you advice that you may
save your own life and the life of your son Solomon. Now how
did he even know that their lives would be in danger It could have
been a logical deduction, it could have been part of a Snowden-type
informant, but it is more likely this was a revelation from the
Holy Spirit. And to me this is encouraging
because the Holy Spirit knows far more about what's going on
behind the scenes, the evils, than we ever will. And we can
have the confidence that when it serves his purposes, he can
make sure that just enough information gets released from whatever source
that it can make the bad guys go down big time. Anyway, this
piece of information he is about to give is pretty serious charge
against Adonijah. It's going to be his undoing.
Verses 13 and 14. Go immediately to King David
and say to him, did you not my Lord, O King, swear to your maidservant
saying, assuredly your son Solomon shall reign after me and he shall
sit on my throne? Why then has Adonijah become
King? Then while you're still speaking there with the King,
I also will come in after you and confirm your words. And Bathsheba
does what she can to stop this conspiracy. Now she's only one
person, and she might think, what can one person do? But she
does what she can do. Verses 15 through 17. So Bathsheba
went into the chamber to the king. Now the king was very old,
and Abishag the Shunammite was serving the king. And Bathsheba
bowed and did homage to the king. Then the king said, what is your
wish? And she said to him, my lord, you swore by the Lord your
God to your servant saying, assuredly Solomon, your son shall reign
after me and he shall sit on my throne. So she is appealing
to a vow that had been taken, just like we can appeal to vows
that have been taken by politicians to the constitution. And she
points out here that failure to do something would be a breaking
of that promise. So now look, Adonijah has become
king, and now my lord the king, you do not know about it. So
she's assuming the best about him, that it's simply an issue
of ignorance. But she goes on to speak of the
crisis that is happening and quickly names three people who
are not a part of the conspiracy. It's important for David to know
who he can trust. And I think it's important for
us as Christians to know, who can we trust in government? Who
are the strict constitutionalists? And more importantly, who are
the people who are biblicists, the Christians who are biblicists
there? Anyway, she goes on in verse 19. He has sacrificed oxen
and fattened cattle and sheep in abundance, and has invited
all the sons of the king, Abiathar the priest, Joab the commander
of the army. But Solomon, your servant, he
is not invited. And as for you, my lord, O king,
the eyes of all Israel are on you, that you should tell them
who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. Otherwise
it will happen when my lord the king rests with his fathers that
I and my son Solomon will be counted as offenders. Now in
this speech, without being offensive in the least, Bathsheba has made
four things crystal clear to David. First, she has made it
clear that he has lost touch with his kingdom, and he needs
to act quickly. And there are a lot of people
who have lost touch with what is happening in America, who
don't realize how serious things are. It is imperative that people
wake up. And actually, to me, a picture
I have in my mind is the church is like David, shivering in bed
with Abishag, and it's really scandalous that the church has
been derelict, has dropped It's duty to our culture. So second,
she has made it clear that Adonijah, Abiathar, Joab, and David's other
sons are all involved to one degree or another in this conspiracy,
and so he cannot depend upon them to help. She names names. And I think it is high time that
we start naming names of the traitors in Washington, D.C.,
in state government, in city and county governments. It's
past time for politeness. We live in critical times and
conspirators need to be identified and exposed. Now, unfortunately,
conservative Republicans, who I do not think are really the
answer, don't even have the guts to vote against Boehner. You
know, he gets brought in again. You take a look at that recent
vote. It really makes me mad. There are so-called good guys
who voted for him. He almost got ejected from his
seat. But the good guys don't have
the guts to stand up to traitors and to conspirators to expose
them. And if we don't have the backbone
and the will to name names and expose conspirators, we are not
going to have the boldness to make a difference. Third, she
makes it clear that Israel is not indifferent to what happens.
She says, the eyes of all Israel are on you. Now some politicians
fail to take any kind of decisive, bold actions like David takes
in this chapter because they think that You know, the public
is not going to stand behind them, and I think they underestimate
the public. The public may be foolish, it
may be stupid, and a lot of things that they do, but the public
really does long for statesmen, not politicians. I think intuitively,
the public despises politicians just as much as they despise
those noblemen in Scotland in the movie Braveheart. We long
for politicians who will take bold actions to defend God's
law and to defend the Constitution. And so we can tell Christians
the same words that Bathsheba told David. The eyes of Israel
are on you. They really do want a leader
and we can encourage our leaders to be bold. Fourth, she makes
it clear that both she and Solomon are in danger of their lives
since Solomon will be treated as a threat to the throne. And
in the same way, conspiracies down through history have had
a habit of dealing harshly with independent thinkers and critics.
Okay, don't think that just because we have not been persecuted,
we won't be persecuted in the future. If pastors keep quiet
now, while they still have a chance to preach, they may not continue
to have a chance to preach in the future. You saw that under
Hitler's Nazism. And I really do find it offensive
what that Pastor Chividian said recently from Coral Bridge Ministries,
where he just blasted pastors who ever preach to social evils. He says, you cannot preach to
social evils from the pulpit. And D. James Kennedy would just
grieve if he knew who had taken over his role in that church. But if citizens keep quiet now
when they have a chance to act with principle, they may not
have opportunities to even vote for true constitutionalists in
the future. If congressmen fail to act on principle, there may
come a time when they cannot act. The dangers are real for
the kind of totalitarianism that always tends to follow the victories
of Adonijos. Verse 22 continues, and just
then, while she was still talking with the king, Nathan the prophet
also came in. So this is tag-teaming. And there
needs to be tag-teaming. There needs to be a synergy of
efforts and a uniting of Biblicists across the nation. Verse 23,
so they told the king saying, here is Nathan the prophet. And
when he came in before the king, he bowed down before the king
with his face to the ground. And I want you to notice there
were other people who were around. This is not a secret caucus.
This is a public meeting. Verse 24, and Nathan said, my
Lord, O king, have you said Adonijah shall reign after me and he shall
sit on my throne? for he has gone down today, and
has sacrificed oxen, and fattened cattle, and sheep in abundance,
and has invited all the king's sons, and the commanders of the
army, and Abiathar the priest. And look, they're eating and
drinking before him. And they say, long live King Adonijah.
But he's not invited me, me, your servant, nor Zadok the priest.
nor Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, nor your servant Solomon. Has
this thing been done by my Lord the King, and you have not told
your servant who should sit on the throne of my Lord the King
after him?" So Nathan arrives while she's still talking so
that there could be no time to question or dispute what she
is saying. God knows exactly what is needed
in order to move David to action. And even though David has tended
to be passive when it came to family issues, He was anything
but passive when it came to the welfare of the kingdom. And so
despite his frailty, despite his weakness, he demonstrates
he still has a very sharp, very clear mind. And he takes four
actions which will make it clear to everyone who his choice for
king has been. First, he swears to Bathsheba
in front of everyone. Then King David answered and
said, call Bathsheba to me. So she came into the king's presence
and stood before the king. And the king took an oath and
said, as the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from every
distress, just as I swore to you by the Lord God of Israel,
saying, assuredly, Solomon, your son, shall be king after me,
and he shall sit on my throne in my place. So I certainly will
do this day. Then Bathsheba bowed with her
face to the earth and paid homage to the king and said, let my
lord, King David, live forever. Then come the players, Zadok,
Nathan, and Benaiah. King David said, ìCall to me
Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son
of Jehoiada.î So they came before the king. The king also said
to them, ìTake with you the servants of your lord and have Solomon
my son ride on my own mule and take him down to Gihon.î There
Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him king over
Israel and blow the horn and say, ìLong live King Solomon.î
Then you shall come up after him and he shall come and sit
on my throne and he shall be king in my place for I have appointed
him to be ruler over Israel and Judah. Benaiah the son of Jehoiad
answered the king and said, amen. May Jehovah God of my Lord the
king say so too. As Jehovah has been with my Lord
the king, even so may he be with Solomon and make his throne greater
than the throne of my Lord King David. So just to summarize what
was going on there, he swears to Bathsheba in front of everybody.
So it's a very public testimony. Then he summons men who will
be able to stand up against Joab. Then he has Solomon placed on
the king's mule. Now this is symbolic, I believe,
for what David really wants to transpire in the aftermath of
all of this mess here, because a mule was a sign of peace. A
horse was a sign of war. And I think it helps to answer
the critics who criticize David for his actions in chapter two.
I think David actually has a balance between peace and mercy on the
one side and taking definitive, immediate action to people who
could be a danger and destroy the kingdom on the other side.
I really do think there is a balance. And even this issue, he's saying,
we want peace if we can have peace. And so there's a symbol
that's going on here. Let's see here. Next, he has
Solomon anointed with oil by the priest and by Nathan the
prophet to make it very clear that this is not just David's
pick of the next king. This is God's pick. Remember,
way earlier, Nathan the prophet had already told him that he
was to call Solomon's name Jedidiah, which means beloved of God, because
he was going to be the next king. So this has been God's pick for
king all along. And then finally he has Solomon
sit on David's throne to show that he was already being given
the full powers of a king, even though it was going to be a co-regency
of David and Solomon until he dies. Solomon was thus invested
with everything constitutionally needed or allowed that would
enable him to deal with the rebellion and to hopefully avoid civil
war. And this all must have transpired very, very quickly because the
celebrations of verses 38 through 40 happened at the same time
as the celebrations going on with Adonijah. Let's read verses
38 to 40. So Zadok the priest, Nathan the
prophet, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the Cherithites and the Pelethites
went down and had Solomon ride on King David's mule and took
him to Gihon. Then Zadok the priest took a
horn of oil from the tabernacle and anointed Solomon, and they
blew the horn. And all the people said, Long
live King Solomon. And all the people went up after
him. And the people played the flutes and rejoiced with great
joy so that the earth seemed to split with their sound." Now,
with Jerusalem as a whole in on this celebration, it would
be very hard for Adonijah to mount an offensive. This was
brilliant thinking on the part of David And I think, again,
it shows even though he was weak in body, he had a very, very
sharp mind. Now next week, I hope to take
verses 41 through to chapter two, verse nine, to contrast
revolutionary overreaction to conspiracy with biblical principled
handling of conspiracy. It's a remarkably measured response
that I wish Republicans would embrace. Instead, Republicans
typically want to oppose terrorism and other conspiracies with more
control and more centralization. It's not a good thing. But I
decided I wanted to end with verse 40 and not continue on
with the rest of the chapter because of time, but also because
I just want one main take-home issue for you today. And that
is this, don't get paralyzed with the conspiracies in our
nation. Realize that God can use conspiracies to wake up the
church, to discipline the church, to oppose other tyrannies. In
other words, they're simply pawns in God's hand. God is doing something
with them, and I believe it's to discipline a nation that has
become idolatrous. But ultimately, conspiracies
are no match for King Jesus. That's the guarantee of Psalm
2, and that's the message of this section. God is in the conspiracy-busting
business, and may we be willing participants with Him. Amen.
Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you that it
does apply to all of life. And even though there's lots
of issues in this chapter that we have not dealt with, I pray
that we would be encouraged to have faith to expect great things
from you and to attempt great things for you, that we would
not be frightened into inaction by the size or by the advancement
of the conspiracies that have happened in our nation. But instead,
we would do our duty, trusting you with the outcome. We pray
that you would bless this, your people, with faith. In Jesus'
name, amen.
God as Conspiracy Buster
Series Life of David
Too frequently Christians become discouraged and even paralyzed
when they see the extent to which humanists have taken over our country.
This sermon is not only a realistic appraisal of the political dangers
we face but also an encouragement to have faith and hope. It encourages
us to approach conspiracies with the paradigm found in Psalm 2.
| Sermon ID | 9953161844290 |
| Duration | 54:00 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 Kings 1:11-40 |
| Language | English |
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