Life Lessons from Jeroboam — Westlake Bible Fellowship

0:00 Introduction and the life of Jeroboam

We are so grateful that you've given us the opportunity to be here. Lord, we pray that you will bring out that which is on your heart, that you'll convey that which is what you would have us to know, that that the words that I speak will be guided by you in all ways. It's in your son's name that we do pray. AM or amen. So there's a danger of having two meetings.

Okay? Sometimes when you have that first meeting, the message is preached in that meeting before you get here. So in large part, I think this should be a similar theme. But for those of you who came looking to hear about Tabitha, I'm sorry, I'm not that guy. You got to come back next week.

This is going to be a discussion about Jeroboam, okay? Jeroboam is an interesting character and I think you'll find that as we go forward here. But do you agree with this statement? And we know that all things, emphasis there, all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Right?

How many of you have that verse memorized Or had it memorized at one time. Right? We believe that. Right? We would say it and continually say it.

But do we mean all things? Right? I'm gonna hope that you're challenged by this study today to expand your idea of all things just a little bit more. Because in this particular example, unlike before where we had you know the example of Elijah who although he was scared at times did the right thing most of the time. Right?

In an amazing way. And we have the example of Jonah who didn't do the right thing all the time, right? Maybe fiftyfifty, probably less than 50% he did the right thing. Well now we're going to go the other way, okay? Jeroboam does nothing right, Okay.

So we're going to take a bad example and learn good things. Can you stick with me for that? Or we're going to try at least. So that's the point today. So here's our framework or I wanted to call a roadmap but I think we're going to be at a 30,000 foot level and then down ground level and back up.

So hang with me as we go forward. We're going to give you a little bit of history. That's just the way I roll. We'll talk about the life of Jeroboam, his rise, the sin that he committed, the fall that he had, what his legacy was, and then hopefully some lessons that we can learn. So that's where we're headed.

We got a long way to go and a short time to get there. If you don't remember, I've been stomping around in the Old Testament here for a couple years. Back in 2021, I started with some messages in different places here. And so this has been a rewarding study for me. When Jeroboam was on the list, I said, that's the next one I wanted to do.

So the Lord has blessed me to be able to do that. So we're right here. This is my view of a history, but don't forget you got a view of history right over there on the side wall. Right? This is where we're talking about.

If you're looking for the history on the the scale of time, go look on that wall. That's where Jeroboam's at. We'll let we'll move on from there. So if we're going to talk about history, we need to talk about the nation of Israel. Okay.

The nation of Israel is is the purpose for today. Now where do we first hear that name Israel? Okay? Well, it's in the leaders. Right?

But the the first leader is Jacob. Right? He was born Jacob. He was renamed Israel. Okay.

That's the first time we hear that. Now, before that, leading up to that was Noah, Isaac, Jacob. Right? Okay. So Jacob is now Israel.

So this is the beginning and it starts out as a family. One father, right? Who had, he was a twin. He deceived, know, was a deceiver, ended up with four wives. There were some favorites there.

He ends up having 12 sons which become different tribes of Israel. Okay? So that you're tracking with me. We're starting here. You understand how this gets started here.

Okay? And then there's some family dynamics. Right? A bunch of it. We won't go into all of it now.

But then then we've got this idea of a famine and the rescue and the the imagery associated with Joseph's rescue of the family in that time. But that gets them to where? Egypt. Right? They get to Egypt because Joseph is there.

They come there for food. And they're in Egypt. And I can't I can't go through each one of them, I'm going to drop these pretty fast. Hang on. Hang in there with me as we go forward.

But coming out of Egypt, who's the leader? Moses. Right? Moses takes him out in what we call the Exodus. Now, he was one...

From one of the tribes. In fact, he was from Levi. Okay? The tribe of Levi, the tribe of the priest. Right?

He was raised in Pharaoh's home and you know, in the wilderness he sees the burning bush. The Lord calls him, take my people out, right? They were, they went, they had gone from honored guests as Joseph, you know, brought him into Egypt to captive slaves in Egypt and the Lord saved him from that. Right? You're tracking with me.

High level history here. Okay. Moses dies. His protege Joshua takes over. Right?

Joshua was one of the two that had gone into the promised land and came back and said, yeah, we can conquer them. Who was the other one? You remember? Caleb. Right?

Caleb was very voiced or vociferous about it. Joshua supported him later and said, no, no, we can do this. He's right. And so here's Joshua. Oops, I'm sorry.

I got a little ahead of myself here. Here's Joshua, you know, now leading the nation of Israel, right? He was from the tribe of Ephraim. But now we know Ephraim is one of the sons of Joseph, right? And so, know, they become one of the tribes, a half tribe.

You heard about all that, okay? So it says that Israel served the Lord God all the days of Joshua and even a little bit longer until those who had come out of Egypt had died off. The elders died off. They forgot what had happened during that Exodus and things started to come unraveled. Okay?

We go through the time of Judges and the key component or the key thought there is that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Not in the eyes of the Lord, but in their own eyes. Right? So so that was a problem. The Lord raised up leaders at that time.

You remember the stories of Gideon and Samson? Ends with Samuel. Right? Samuel, we might hear a little bit about that. I heard somebody might take up Hannah, his mother.

But anyway, these leaders are raised up specific purposes by God during this time and things were out of control. Let's say that. They go to Samuel and say, what? We want a king. Very important.

7:10 The desire for a king: Saul and David

And he is a grand physical what? Specimen. He is taller than everybody. He's big. He's strong.

This is what you'll, you know, he'll lead you as a king. Right? And Samuel does warn him though. Now be careful and remember, and this is important as we go forward today. What does he warn him?

You're not understanding this. The king will take the best of the best. The king will take your men. He will take your livestock. He will take your gold.

He will take everything. Just remember that. And they forgot that until, you know, we can work on it a little bit later here. After Saul fails, the Lord says, no, I don't want a physical specimen. What do I want?

I want a spiritual specimen. A man after God's own heart and he anoints David. Now Samuel's still around. David ascends to the throne. He's got some baggage though in his life.

We're going to talk about that a little bit later too, right? David and the false city had versus who he was really, okay? David passes and through some, know, like not trickery, but some machinations. Solomon, his son ascends to the throne, a son of Bathsheba, interestingly enough. And Solomon asked for wisdom.

Right. And he's wise beyond all others. But he also is given riches beyond all others. Tremendously rich to the point where they said, at the time of Solomon, silver was like not a thing. Because there was so much gold around that silver was not worth much.

So, you know, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. So so here we are. You're following the leadership here. Right? As we're tracking forward, we're setting things up.

Okay? I'm going to just drop this next name because it's the next one in line. Okay? Still the nation of Israel as one. Alright?

And his name is Rehoboam. Now there's a lot of names here and that's one of the reasons I'm typing them up there. So you don't get them all confused because some sound a lot like others. Mrs. Reeder reminded me these are the Boams.

The Boam brothers. Right? Jeroboam and Rehoboam. So get them straight. Rehoboam is the son of Solomon.

He ascends to the throne after Solomon. Okay? And everything's moving along. You see that there's here's this promise that was made. In your seed, I will, you know, I will provide a savior.

And in the tribe of Judah... So here it is. Judah, Judah, Judah, right? Tracking. Okay?

We're all good. Everything's set up to that point until this happens. Okay. Now I just want to give you a plug. If you want to hear a really good analysis of Solomon and his psyche or mindset and the way he grew up and sort of the way you know he probably influenced his life, Go listen to Andy's last message.

He gave a wonderful rendition of Solomon's early life and why he probably or could have been the way that he wasn't. So I'm gonna stand on top of that and say Solomon had a great sin. Many great sins maybe. It says that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. That's a thousand women that he was trying to keep happy.

Okay? And it's a great sin. Why are the ladies laughing? I thought the men would be. But so he's got a problem with his wives.

His... The wives come from all over the place in many different nations and they do what? They lead him to worship other gods other than the Lord God Almighty. Okay? And so that's a problem.

And the Lord says, you know, based on this, we got a problem. This is not the way I expected it. You're not like your father David who worshipped me and kept my commandments and statutes and whatnot. So again, we'll come back to that. And so, oops, He says, I'm really angry with you.

I'm so angry that I'm gonna rip this nation apart. That's the setup. Okay? He's gonna, he's so angry that he's gonna do that. That's the penalty.

I'm gonna tear this apart. It's not gonna be under you. You're gonna see this happen. Okay? And he shows him a little mercy though and he says, but for the sake of your father David, I will not do it in your generation because I promised him your son would reign.

I'll do it in the next generation. So we just saw it up there. Who's after Solomon? Rehoboam. Rehoboam.

However you say that. Okay. So here we are. This is the setup, the history that leads up to where we're at today in our study of Jeroboam. Okay.

12:21 The life of Jeroboam

We're going to spend quite a bit of time at one Kings, the rendition there. There are other parts of Jeroboam's life that are explained a little bit further in two Kings and the Chronicles. But this is one Kings 11 through about fourteen fifteen is where we'll spend most of our time today. So here's the tribe of Judah. Solomon is reigning, right?

He's the king, the king that they wanted. Everybody wanted a king. So here he is rich and wise. And he's got this servant, this guy named Jeroboam, son of Naboth. Naboth.

I feel bad for that guy. I don't there's not much about that guy but to think that Jeroboam son of Naboth is repeated constantly is a problem going forward. But he's from the tribe of Ephraim which is from Joseph, right? We remember in our history here and he sees him and he says, you know what? This guy's got a resume.

Says that he's a mighty man of valor. At least me to believe he may have gained his fame or cut his teeth as a soldier. Okay? I don't know. Possible.

And he was given responsibility. He was industrious. He showed some some pluck or whatever you wanna call it. He was the guy. And so Solomon says I need a guy to run this labor force.

The labor force associated with the tribe of Joseph and there's a guy in Joseph. He's the guy. I'm picking Jeroboam. Okay. So he picks Jeroboam.

He's using him to rebuild the Milo it appears or and the city, damage to the city of Jerusalem. All back breaking work. The Milo was basically a raised area that was used for the defense of the city. So basically just a big mound that they could fight from or you know throw stones from. I don't know exactly, but that's what he were doing.

So you can imagine the backbreaking work in those days that that was. And so this is what he had to do. It appears he gains respect of the people that he's working with and that he's over and he's a little bit discontent by the time he's done doing the work for Solomon because of all the work he had to do. And then comes this prophecy of this guy named Ahijah. Now get this one straight.

Ahijah like Elijah. It's a a l I h. Okay? Or a h I j. Did I get that right?

Ahijah. It's got an h in it as opposed to another guy that comes up here in a second. This guy is a man of God. He's a prophet and he runs into Jeroboam outside the city. Okay?

And they have a chat. He's got a brand new garment on and what does he do? He pulls the garment off. He rips it into 12 pieces. And he says to Jeroboam, pick 10.

Pick 10 pieces. It's all imagery. He says, because you are going to rule over Israel, those 10 tribes. Because of Solomon's sin, I'm gonna rip 10 tribes out away from him for not... For him to not rule over and you are the man.

Now this is prophecy direct from God through Ahijah to Jeroboam. Now so far we're thinking he's industrious guy. He's got some chops. He knows what he's doing. Solomon understand, you know, is well aware of him.

But now he's gonna rip him out. So you're thinking maybe this Jeroboam's a good guy. God likes him. Okay. Let's keep that in mind.

So he gives him this this classic mathematical statement. Okay? Or a programming statement if you will. It's called if then else. If you do this then this will happen otherwise that's what's going to happen.

Okay? Excel you use it all the time. If you've never done that, if then else. It's a principle as well as an equation. If you walk in my ways, do what's right in my eyes, God's saying, right?

Keep my statutes, keep my commandments the way your father David has, then... Okay. We're understanding the if. Right? That's the if.

If you do this, then I will be with you. I will build your house. Not just a physical structure, but a legacy that will go forward. You will reign over these 10 tribes for a long time. We don't know exactly how, but he's saying, if you do this, then that will happen.

Okay? And I will give Israel to you. Now, that sounds like a lot, doesn't it? That God made this promise and gave him 10 tribes. 10 out of 12.

That's... What... How much... What's that percentage? Five sixth.

Right? It's a big deal. And he says, if you do this, so oh, something else is gonna happen. Now that's like... That's called foreshadowing.

We're mixing math and and literature now. We've got a little foreshadowing going on. Yeah. Well, Solomon finds out about it. And what does Solomon plan to do?

He's going to kill him. You know? He's the enemy of the crown. We can't have this guy around. Yeah, he was industrious before, but he's overstepped his bounds.

Something along those lines. And he's going to kill him. So what does Jeroboam do? He runs. He heads to Egypt and he gets you know a place to live and he's doing all right there apparently until Solomon dies.

18:02 Rehoboam ascends to the throne

Right? He's from the tribe of Judah. He's the son of Solomon. He's the next in line. Right?

After the king comes the son. That's just the way kings work. So there he is. So Rehoboam comes in. He's young.

Okay? You hear some verses in Chronicles that say, he was inexperienced and young and made a huge mistake when he does this. People come to him as he ascends the throne and they say to him, look, we loved your dad, but man, he killed us. The taxes that he has charged us in order to do all of this. I mean to the point where they drank out of gold cups, solid gold cups it says in Solomon's house at that time.

He was extravagantly wealthy and if one person is drinking out of a gold cup and another person's drinking out of the you know the ditch, there's a problem you know. That's an age old problem, but people do what? When there's an election that comes up, what do they do? They complain about money. It happens, even back here.

You know, little distribution to the wealthier, that'd be good for us. And so he says, okay, let me take some advice. So he goes to all the old counselors, the counselors that his dad used, right? He said, fellas, I got this problem. What would you do?

And the old timers say, you know what, if it was up to us, it would be our counsel for you to back off a little bit. Take it down. Okay, fine. Walks over, talks to the young counselors, those he grew up with. And he says, what do you guys think?

You know the old guy said this, the people are asking for that, what do you think? And what do they say? Lay it on them. You know, if you don't, if they don't, if you, if they don't respect you or if you don't make them respect you by taxing them and showing them who's boss, they'll never get any respect. Right?

We've heard those kind of things. Brash, very green response. And the people, I don't stand for that. Okay? They said no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is not right. It's not right. So we want a leader that's going to listen to us. Okay? And by the way, you guys in Judah, who do you think you are ruling over us?

We want our own king. And it says throughout this time that the Lord is in this. His hand is in and amongst us so that he splits the 10 tribes out. Right? And so there it is, it's a revolt.

They recalled Jeroboam from Egypt. He must have had a great following or people must have respected him to say, hey, come on back. You're gonna be the king. So there he is. He's the king.

And now we have the split. Okay? They're they've the nation. Okay? There's what used to be called Israel or sometimes throughout the writings in the Bible it'll say Israel or Jacob.

Because it's his former name, right? They took him into the promised land. They inhabited it all together. They divided it up And there it is, Israel. But now we have two sections, right?

There's 10 tribes that now are referred to as Israel. Okay? And they're in what's called the Northern Kingdom, or in the area of Samaria. So now as you read forward from this point on, as you read the book of the books of the Old Testament, you're gonna hear reference to this. Okay.

It's very important to try and sort it out. So this is why Phil, you were right and your dad was right. Okay? There was a first king of Israel. Who was it?

That's right. And then there's the first king of Israel. Who is it Andy? Jeroboam. So you see how the difference is.

We have to sort this out because now as you're talking going forward, you have to refer to who they're talking about in the context. Okay? So here we have, you know, the Israel and the Northern Kingdoms in the area of Samaria. This is now the 10 tribes go forward under Jeroboam and the others remain with Judah. It's referred to as Judah in the Southern Kingdom around Jerusalem.

Okay? This is important to to refer to when we are reading our Bible there. Okay. The whole time. The whole time, if you read through this, the hand of God is in and amongst this work.

Okay? So how is it? This is a guy that he's ripping it apart. How can God be tearing something apart and it be good? Keep asking that question.

22:59 Jeroboam's terrible sin

Then when desire has conceived it gives birth to sin. And sin when it is full grown brings death. Okay? Same concept. This is not new from the Old Testament, old from the New Testament.

It's the same concept going forward. Okay? So he has a desire. He commits a sin. And then what's even worse, he leads people in that direction.

So let's talk about that. He's got this heart condition where he said, people need to worship. Right? We've grown up this way. This is our tradition.

We're gonna worship a God. So if they go back to worship the gods, where are they gonna go? Worship God, where are they gonna go? They're gonna go to Jerusalem. Right?

That's where we've always done it. And if they go back to Jerusalem, they're gonna now start following whom? Rehoboam. Right? Go back to those folks at Judah.

So we can't have that. I want people... It's this pride issue. Right? I want people to follow me.

I mean, are my 10 kingdoms. I I I. Right? So what does he do? He says, if I don't do something, they're gonna kill me and I'm gonna be out of a job.

Not, not what he's looking for as now his new kingdom. So, what does he do? He goes and seeks advice. But not from the Lord. Doesn't say exactly where he sought advice, but he seeks advice not from the Lord.

And he decides, you know what, we're gonna set up some worship around here. No sense you all having to go all the way back there. Why don't we put something in Bethel and Dan, which are like the far reaches of his area and says, you can worship here, you don't have to go back there. And by the way, do you remember that old story? Remember that old story where we all were brought out of that Exodus story?

They worshipped the gold calves back then. You remember that? Maybe they had it right. So we're going to worship the gold calves. Okay?

I don't know if he has that. That's a paraphrase from my loose translation. But he's going back. But there's a reason to call it this way. Remember we brought out of Egypt, it must have been these other guys, know.

This Lord God and he separates things, but not a lot. They're worshiping, wants them to worship. Wants them to worship in His way. Right? Just just it's a little bit of a difference.

A little bit of a change. A little bit of history mixed in there. A little bit of revisionism. Right? It's all getting just a little bit different.

And he sets this up okay. He prepares altars to worship the Lord at. Okay. That's important to remember and then he leads the people in this direction. It's one thing for you to sin.

It's something completely different when you lead somebody else into sin. Parents if that doesn't cause you to gulp, pause or whatever. Leaders in the assembly, leaders in wherever, leaders in life, if you don't choke on that one that's a problem. Okay? Don't lead somebody else into sin.

But he you know he starts saying we're going to worship here. He creates priests from all the tribes. Remember the priests were originally set up as being from Levi. Okay? He decides, no, that's old fashioned.

We're gonna do something different here. Okay? We're gonna create a feast. Well just like the one in Judah. It's gonna be a feast that we're gonna have.

But we're gonna have our own feast. Right? And we're gonna we're gonna call it this and we're gonna do that. It's a little bit of separation here. Okay?

And he sacrifices at Bethel. Foreshadowing. Okay. Moses set up this remembrance okay. So I'll call it the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

They're gonna have a feast. This was the original feast okay. And Moses said to the people, remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. That was from Exodus chapter 13 verse three.

You can find a remember coming out of Egypt. I don't know how many times that occurs in the Old Testament, even the New Testament. Remember the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. Remember nation of Israel, The Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. Has anybody ever heard that saying before?

We all hear it a lot, right? It's remember, remember. Remember who? Was it remember Jeroboam? Was it remember Moses?

Was it remember Aaron? No. Remember the Lord God who brought you out of bondage. Remember who? So this is why it's particularly important to understand that when Jeroboam sets this up, it's like a spit right in the eye of the Lord.

It couldn't have been worse. He couldn't have offended him more than to do something like this. He constantly said, remember this miracle. And what does he do? He turns and spits in his eye and said, I'm gonna do it my way.

And I, not only am I gonna do it my way, I'm gonna lead all the rest of these in my way. Terrible sin. Terrible sin. Okay. He was given the kingdom by the Lord.

The Lord set this up. And the Lord told him through his prophet, I am giving you the king. Oh, or the kingdom. I'm making you king. Okay?

He forgot all about that. Then he forgot and tried to dissuade to who actually brought them out. Okay? It might have been them gold calves. It's somebody, you know, let's change it just a little bit.

And then he was responsible for this terrible sin of leading everybody astray or the people astray. This is the setup for where we're going next. Okay? So let's continue in the life and talk about his fall. Because he's done all this, the Lord's gonna respond in some way, isn't he?

29:18 Prophecy of the man of God

Start off with the man of God. There's this man of God comes from Judah. Right? And he gives a prophecy. He gives two prophecies actually.

The first one is this long term prophecy. Okay. He says listen, this king out of Judah, a boy named Josiah. Now isn't that who you talked about at VBS this year? Josiah the boy king.

That's the guy. Okay? He is going to sacrifice these priests on this altar. He's gonna burn their bones right here. And it came true not too long after that.

Second Kings chapter 23, if you wanna read about it. Okay? It's important that we know that prophecy comes true. And here's one comes true quickly. We can easily see that.

Okay? So he also, after he comes, he goes to the altar, and he he says this first prophecy. And his next prophecy is this. And not only that, just so you know what I just said is true, this altar is going to break in half and the ashes are going to pour out. Jew or Jeroboam is standing there and what's Jeroboam saying?

Ho ho. We can't have this, right? He's changing everything or he's saying everything against what I just said And so he sticks out his hand and he says, arrest him. What happens to his hand? Says as he stuck his hand out, his hand was withered.

Right? As if a miracle. Right? His hand was withered right there before everybody. And Jeroboam's like, that's not good.

And he he turns to the man of God and he said, could you ask your Lord to restore my hand, please? And what happens? He prays, hands restored. Another miracle. Right?

Right there. So you would think Jeroboam would think twice about that. But what does Jeroboam do? Jeroboam says, hold on. This is a guy I should have on my team.

Right? What do say come back and eat with me? Eat and drink. You've had a long journey. You've been here.

You've been spouting off. Come on back to my place. Let's have a drink and and talk this out. Right? And what happens?

The man of God says, nope. No can do. I want you to know clearly that the Lord God told me I should not eat and drink before returning. So I'm not going back with you. In other words, I'm not going to, you know, participate in this filth here.

I'm leaving. Good answer. Right? That's what the Lord told him and he decides to do that. If it only held up because he does get tempted again and he ends up falling.

This man of God. Okay? So real difficult portion of scripture. But here he goes. This...

There's an old prophet in the land of you know, Samaria, Jeroboam's area there. Right? It looks like he's fallen away from the faith or maybe not proclaimed it the way he should. He's struggling. His boys come to him and say, looky here, that man of God, he he just went out by this way and so you might wanna go catch him.

So this guy, the old guy goes out and he he lies to him and says, the lord told me you should come back and drink and eat with me. And so he says, well, maybe the lord changed his mind. Right? Unfortunate answer. So he goes back.

Sorry, I'm a little ahead of myself. He goes back. He drinks and eats with him. He leaves and he gets killed by a lion. The lion and the donkey that the guy was on stand guard over him.

Lions and donkeys don't usually get along, but they did in this case. Another miracle. Okay? So this guy's dead because he did not follow the Lord. The Lord said, do not eat there.

Okay? So bad bad scene. Jeroboam, even after all this, even after all of this, refuses to follow the Lord and decides... He actually doubles down. Okay?

He's defiant. Now we go to Ahijah's prophecy. Right? Ahijah said, you're gonna have the 10 tribes? And now we have a problem here because Abijah Abijah, the son of Jeroboam is sick.

And they don't know if he's going to live, so they say, you know what? Jeroboam says to his wife, look, the only thing I can think of, go back to Ahijah. You remember that guy that told me I was going to be king? Go back and talk to him. But you better disguise yourself because if they know you're from me, ain't no way they're talking to you.

Okay? So sneak back in there and see if you can get a blessing for our son so he lives. And so she sneaks back in there. Ahijah sees her coming a mile away and says, ah, wife of Jeroboam, because of what your husband has done, your son will die. When you cross the threshold going back into your house, dead.

That's the way it is. That's because of this. All right? What an awful thing. He hadn't followed after he'd been given the kingdom and there he is.

So I'm sorry, skipped over, but the other prophecy by Jeroboam was that not only is your son going to die, your whole house is going be wiped out. And that was only two kings later, Baasha wipes out everybody that is associated with Jeroboam. So he was given a warning. You got to think about this whole thing in the context of Jeroboam. Okay.

It's all quote unquote all about Jeroboam. Alright. He was given a warning. Okay. He was seeing fulfilled prophecy right before his eyes as the altar cracked and the ashes poured out right before him.

Right? He was given a miracle. His hand was his hand was withered and then restored. The Lord had shown mercy on him. Think about it from Jeroboam.

He... This had been a great message to Jeroboam. Okay? And then, the man of God is killed. As an example, the Lord, I think the Lord's saying, look, not only do I hold those who call me Lord more accountable, But I also want you to know that my message is not going to get sullied by this man's sin.

Okay? He's going to die for his sin. And that's a message back to Jeroboam. Just like we heard this morning. Right?

We heard Jim say that, you know, that the man was stoned in Numbers chapter 15. He was stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Sounds really harsh. But then he goes on to say, do this to remember what the statues of the Lord are. Right?

Now, I'll bet everybody was really interested in remembering by that point. After some guy just got stoned. Now, who's to know what God's purposes are? Who are we to question what his purposes are and how he takes care of things? But I'll bet that was the case.

So not the case here with Jeroboam. He says, in your eye, I'm not doing it. I'm gonna double down. Right? So he sees the prophecy, sees the fall and the death of the of the old man of God.

And then his son is sick. It's almost like, look, how much do I have to put on you? Really? Do I have to lay it to you that hard? And there he's going to lose his son.

His last chance, I think. And then the penalty, he was condemned moving forward. So we know that the Lord is not slack concerning his promise. As some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us. Not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance.

37:02 Jeroboam's legacy and the dark time

This is repeated, I don't know how many times, 25 times in the rest of Kings and Chronicles. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, meaning the king that followed Jeroboam, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, frequently says son of Naboth. And in his sin by which he made Israel sin, he led them in the wrong direction. Okay. That was his terrible sin.

Now here's here are the kings of after of Israel. Right? Israel after Jeroboam. Right? There's 20 of them here.

Right? As it goes forward down here to Hoshea, which is the last one in this line. Rehoboam had his own list, which ironically includes 20 names as well. And this is the split and this is what happens. Okay.

And would you agree with me that this is a really dark time in the nation of Israel? Terribly dark time. Okay. Our our preacher from last week's Naden, right? He knows, but Jonah was in a dark time.

And so there it is, the darkness. But what shines out in the darkness? These prophecies. Right? In this case, we talked about Ahijah prophecy shines.

Right? We talked about, Chris was here a couple weeks ago, talked about Elijah who shined in what might have been the worst of the times, the time of Ahab and his wife Jezebel. May have been, he said, at the time of Ahab, he said it seemed to be a trivial thing to do the sin of Jeroboam when you were living in the time of Ahab. It was horrible at that time. Okay?

But there's Elijah shining in the darkness. Right? And then later, Jonah shines in the darkness. Okay? So what lessons can we learn?

Hang in there with me. Throughout this, and I alluded to it a little bit, but if you go back and read these passages, you are going to hear over and over this concept. You didn't do it like my David. You didn't do it like my son David. You are not following me like David did.

What's that mean? Have you ever broke that down? What does it mean to be like David? Okay. Should we be a murderer?

Adulterer? An enabler? Because that's what David did. He murdered. He, you know, was an adulterer and he enabled his kids to have a bad life after he was king.

Okay? It was a tough time after that. Go read a little bit more about David. And you'll see that this is, is this the David he's talking about? Say no.

No with me. Right? Shake your head. No, it's not. So he must be talking about the guy that plays the harp.

Or the guy that was a fantastic poet. Right? Or maybe the shepherd. I got them mixed up. So maybe we all should go and learn how to shepherd sheep.

Because then we would be like David. Do you think that's what he means? I don't think so. Let's look at him in contrast to Jeroboam. Right?

We'll look back at the life of Jeroboam. The rise, the fall, or the sin, and then the fall of Jeroboam. Right? Now when when Jeroboam rose to power, what did he do? He forgot who put him there.

Thought it was his own. He thought it was his own strength that got him there. What happened next? David, what did he do? He always said, remember the Lord.

Right? I waited patiently on the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry and lifted me out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock. Psalm 40. We talked about that last week up in Rochester.

But he said, remember, when he was swinging that, that what do you call that thing? Sling. Right? He's saying, I'm gonna send us because the Lord will protect me. I don't need any armor.

I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna knock this big guy down because the Lord wants him down. He's defying the Lord. Okay. Jeroboam's big sin is he led everybody astray.

David danced through the streets half naked to make sure everybody knew that the ark was coming. Right? Look what's going on here. His his wife chastised him. He said, no.

No. I can't do enough for the lord. You know, I want you to remember the Lord. Okay? When he was caught, what did Jeroboam do?

Jeroboam, you're doing a wrong thing. Jeroboam doubled down and was defiant to the Lord. What did David do? I have sinned against you alone, Lord. And he dropped to his knees, didn't eat anything.

His son still died. The penalty was still there. But he got up and said, I, you know, I can't go to... Or he can't come to me, but I can go to him. Right?

And he turned back to the Lord and said, look, everybody. People went to him and said, man, that guy going, are you okay? What's going on? No, no, no. Everybody, look, it's the Lord.

He pointed back to the Lord. The Psalms are with examples of David saying, look at the Lord. So here's the comparison. This is what it means, I think, to be like David in part. Right?

There's so much more we could look to. But let's talk about the nation of Israel. We started there and you remember, here we have these leaders of Israel before the nation split, right? From Jacob, Moses, Joshua on down to Solomon and Rehoboam, right? And then we go on to the split and here's Jeroboam on down through Hoshea.

Right? And we know that there was another line that went down here, another 20 kings that went on the line of Judah. Right? So we can we can see the same thing. Judah did a little bit better sometimes, not so good in other times.

But but here it is. We have this whole leadership of the nation of Israel from the time that it was... It needed a leader here at Moses. That's when they needed the leader first to lead them out of Egypt. And then down here to where the kings weren't working out.

And how is the Lord trying to speak to them then? Through the prophets, like Ahijah or Jonah or Elijah. Right? That's how he's trying to speak through them. So the Lord is trying all this way to speak through to him, to remember him.

Remember me like David did. So from Moses to Elijah, almost from the beginning to the end. What have we seen here? Not good stuff. Right?

Do you remember this story in the New Testament? Said they went up to the Mount Of Transfiguration. And three that were with the Lord said, it was Peter, James and John. Right? And they saw three people there.

Who did they see? Jesus, Moses and Elijah. Right? Recognize them. Chris pointed that out.

And so what happened? The Lord said, hey, I know you see this but I want you to listen to whom? The Lord Jesus. And they turned and they saw Jesus only. So think about it.

From the time of Moses, the beginning when they needed a leader, prophets. Don't listen to all that. Listen to me. Listen to my son who's there as an example. Okay?

44:43 Restoring the relationship with God

Okay. We see that the Lord comes himself, Jesus Christ, to restore the relationship one to one. Okay. If you really look back at David's life and his relationship with God, what is it? It's a direct relationship to God.

He's talking directly to God when he's talking in the Psalms. When he cries out directly to the Lord God himself. Okay? That's a very personal relationship as you see it demonstrated in David's life. Okay?

And now we have it one step better. Because we've seen the Lord himself. Jesus Christ, whom we can follow as an example. And he did what? He left us the Holy Spirit to indwell us.

I I submit to you that I think our Lord, the God of this universe, the creator of the world wants a relationship with you. And with you. And with you. And with me. And he wants it directly with you.

He wants you to communicate directly with him. Don't need to go through anybody else. The elders don't have to lead you. You can be led by the Lord. He's got reasons for elders, but your husband, your wife, your kids, your politician doesn't need to lead you.

Your country doesn't need to be what's going to save you. In this really dark time, right? It's really dark time. The Lord shined pretty bright. He can do that now.

It's a personal relationship that he wants to have with each one of us. So I think there's a whole bunch of things you could learn throughout that. I hope you did because I did. I'm sorry it took so long, but let's pray. Father, we're grateful that you you desire to have a relationship with us.

Lord, you've worked so hard. You've given us such a history. You've seen so much and endured so much. You have it now. And that we would seek after following you.

It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Life Lessons from Jeroboam — 1 Kings 11-14

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Life Lessons from Jeroboam — 1 Kings 11-14

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