Answers Bible Curriculum: Lesson 1 - Kings of Israel and Judah

Lord, we thank you so much for your kindness to us. Thank you for your, your word. That diagnoses our soul and, and then you really give us the antidote which is yourself. you, we cry out to you and you're so willing to answer this poor man cried and the Lord answered him.

You're so willing to deliver us from The pit, many times it's our own flesh. We know that we have the enemies of the world, the flesh, the devil, and And yet you have given us what we need for life and godliness. And so we just pray that your name would be hallowed this, this morning. We ask that your kingdom would be extended in our hearts.

Thank you, Lord, for just providing our daily food. Both physically and spiritually. Lord, help us to forgive one another as you have forgiven us. We ask you.

That deliver us into. Temptation but deliver us from evil. And We just thank you for this morning in Christ's name. Amen.

All right. So we've already done a little review from last week just with our Little discussion there. so we're moving into a new section. So this is still Answers Bible curriculum, but now we're moving into a section that we're calling God's Justice and Mercy.

if you've been with us, we have, the Answers to Bible Curcurriculum talks about the seven seas of history, which I think is a very helpful outline of the whole Bible. We start all the way on the left there with what? Creation, and then we have, corruption, right? Corruption would be the fall, but that's pretty close.

Then catastrophe, that'd be the flood. So then 4 is. Confusion with the Tower of Babel, so we have the division of the nations. Number 5 is Christ, so Christ comes to the earth.

And then number 6. is the cross. So Jesus dies, dies on the cross. And the number 7 would be consummation.

So that's the whole Bible. I've also given you guys In a thing of 9 periods of Israel's or Old Testament history. I don't know, anybody have any recollection of that? Raise your hand just to make me feel good.

OK. So when we talk about the first period of Israel's history, one bun, we're talking about. Creation or beginnings. Tissue, we're talking about.

Patriarchs. Good. Number 3, 33. There's a little exit sign on the tree.

We're talking about exodus, 4 door. So all these walls crumble down around the door. Conquest, 5 Hive. Got it.

Justice got judges. 6 sticks. You got a king holding up two sticks together, United Kingdom. OK, so we're, everything's together.

Then 7th heaven, you got a divided crown. That's the Divided Kingdom, that's where we're at right now. 8 gate. Is the exilic period, it's up in exile, 9 dime, coming back, post exilic return.

So we're in a period of Israel's history where it's the divided kingdom. The North has been divided from the south. So in the North, who are, who, who do we have in the north? What's the one name?

Israel, so we have really 9.5 or 10 tribes at different points up north and then down south you have basically which is the main tribe Judah. So Judah, Benjamin, who's the main king that was up north that led the rebellion? Jeroboam, down south, Reyabo. So, you can have Jerry and Ray, however you wanna try to remember it.

so this would be akin, so if you imagine the Civil War occurring in the United States, but the South wins, and now there's this big division, just imagine that happened. That's what happens with Israel's Israel rebels, Judah's down south, there's all this war, but eventually, they remain separate until they each get carried off into captivity. That's part of what we're gonna be looking at this morning via overview is which, which group gets taken away first, Israel or Judah? Israel gets taken up in 722 BC by Assyria.

And then around 586, Judith gets carried away by, what's that guy's name again? Nebuchadnezzar, Nebi. Yeah, one of my favorite names in the Bible. So Nebuchadnezzar carries them off into captivity.

But, so when they return, Who comes back? Is it both Israel and Judah that comes back? No, actually, Israel, that's why we talk about the 10 lost tribes. Israel just gets disseminated, they never come back.

but Judah comes back down, and that's the post-exoic period, and they begin to repopulate the land, they rebuild the temple, and that's where things are at. In a nutshell, when Christ shows up on the scene, it's just you've gone through these different kingdoms, right? So Nebuchadnezzar, that was Babylon. Anybody remember the kingdom after Babylon that we see in world history?

So Persia comes in after Babylon. Who comes in after Persia? The Greeks, the Greeks are running everything for a while. And Who's a great leader and Alexander the Great.

And so eventually, they get taken over by the Romans. And so that's brings us up to the New Testament period. So, Israel's still back in the land. They've got their temple and stuff, but Rome's in control.

So it's the nutshell. Overview there. Right, so now you guys are all experts on the Old Testament and world history. And so on, we could all feel really good.

So the period that we're talking about here, with this divided kingdom. And if you guys read any of that historic background stuff in your student guide, This is overlapping with some of what's going on in Greek culture. So, for instance, the Olympiad, the first Olympiad was held in 776 BC. we've got Homer and Aesop's Fables are, are being written.

over on the other side of the world, the Mayan culture is blooming in Central America. So the stuff that we're looking at about this divided kingdom period, that's what's going on in the world if you were to look. Look broadly. So let's go ahead and let's open up to First Kings.

As we talk about. Several different kings throughout the scripture, and we're gonna see some patterns. And we're gonna start with Jeroboam. 1 Kings 14.

7. And you guys probably remember. Jeroboam, is he ended up being a good guy or a bad guy? This guy's a bad guy.

In fact, Just about every other king after Jeroboam is measured by whether they were more or less wicked than Jeroboam, right? So when you're being compared, you're like the gold, I know we wanted to call it gold, but You are the rough standard for determining whether kings are good or bad. Yeah, that's, that's almost like in our day, if you were trying to figure out some really bad, bad dude that we're gonna compare every other bad dude to, say in the last 100 years, what do you think, what name would come up?

Hitler, right?

That's the first guy that comes up. We're talking about really bad people. We say, whether they were like Hitler, more wicked than Hitler, less wicked than that. That's, this is Jeroboam.

So let's start in verse 7 to 18. We have some We're gonna go pretty quickly through a lot of these texts, but let's go 7. And go tell Jeroboam, thus says the Lord God of Israel, because I exalted you from before the people and made you ruler over my people Israel and tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you, and yet you have not been as my servant David who kept my commands and who followed me with all his heart to do only what was right in my eyes. That's always interesting when the Bible repeatedly talks about David as being Doing the Lord's will and doing only what was right in God's sight.

What comes to mind every time you read a phrase like that? Say it again. I see Yeah, we just think, what about Bathsheba? And so how do we explain that?

How do you explain the fact that the Bible's universal view of David is that he was righteous in the eyes of the Lord and he did what was right in the Lord's eyes? Yeah, he was repentant and ultimately he's being viewed on the pages of scripture through this, I think what we call from a New Testament pers perspective, positional righteousness, right? That in Christ, he is righteous and he did repent. The overall tenor of his life is that he turned to the Lord.

Yes, he fell, but the overall, viewpoint of David is that he, repented and by faith. followed Christ. follow the Lord. Verse 9, but you have done more evil than all who are before you, for you have gone and made yourself other gods and molded images to provoke me to anger.

And have cast me behind your back. That's a very interesting phrase. Jeroboam, this metaphor just takes Yahweh and just throws him behind his back. I'm not even gonna think about you.

Do you guys remember what were the initial images that Jeroboam set up? Golden calves. Why would that be attractive? To some old time Israelites.

well, there is the bale worship thing, definitely. And it's also there is some other history, right? Aaron setting up the golden calves and and, and definitely the bale worship tie-in, right? So it's like old-time religion.

If you guys remember from several weeks ago, this doesn't come out of a a vacuum. This is a return we, we made this little analogy a few weeks ago. It's kinda like what's going on in Mexico right now culturally there's this movement like let's get back to the good old gods of the Aztecs and reject the Catholicism that was brought here by our oppressors. let's just get back to those, those good old days when we were worshiping the sun god and so on.

And so he brings in these, these calves, and he sets them up and Dan and is it Bethel? Down in the south. So, therefore, verse 10, I will bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. We'll cut off from Jeroboam every male in Israel, bond and free.

I will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam as one takes away refuse until it is all gone. That's a pretty powerful image. back then, they didn't have indoor plumbing, right? But you, you still had to go take your refuse somewhere.

If we were to put this into a modern way, we'd say, I'm basically just gonna flush him down the toilet. Right. And all of his, all of his progeny, they're just gonna get flushed. The dog shall eat whoever belongs to Jeroboam and dies in the city, and the birds of the air shall eat whoever dies in the field, for the Lord has spoken.

That's pretty strong image. Arise, therefore, go to your house and, and when your feet enter the city, the child shall die. Now, we didn't pick up the previous context, but does anybody know who is being spoken to by the prophet here? Ahijah?

His wife. And so this is one of those. trick, trippy scenes again, our prophets in the Old Testament, they almost feel a little bit like David Carrott, what, what's the, the name of the guy that was the kung fu guy? David Kerrigan, David Kerrigan?

Carradine, OK. That's the almost individual that you feel like a lot of these Old Testament prophets are like. they, they accept they're not Buddhists, they serve the Lord, but you can imagine like the Buddhist flute going on and all that stuff. Somebody comes walking up, the wife comes up, and he already knows who she is, even though she's coming clothed, and the Lord's already told her.

And then, so he gives this message. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he is the only one of Jeroboam. Who shall come to the grave because in him, there is found something good towards the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam, which is very interesting.

We'll talk about that later. Moreover, the Lord will raise up for Himself a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam. This is the day, what even now. And then when you track what happens, indeed, as soon as she comes into the city, the child dies, and all of these things come about.

So, So let's ask a, a very straightforward question. is Jeroboam considered a good or bad king? Pretty easy, yeah. So that's a very easy question.

Say it again. Is, oh yeah. and then what would you say, what's the main reasoning here? What's the main reason that Jared Baum is considered such a bad guy?

Yeah, so he brings them back to idol worship. Which to us just, it doesn't feel like it's all that bad. Right? So Israel starts.

Praying to some golden calves. What's the big deal? Idol worship is always connected to other evils. A movement away from Yahweh is not just a movement into another equally.

Edifying religion where everybody is keeping the golden rule. And that's that's part of the lie that we have to remember we're in our culture we're drinking our culture and our culture basically says all religions are basically the same and everybody's just trying to do good and follow the golden rule and we're all just trying to be good people as we follow our God. Reality is, is from the Old Testament argues, from the Old Testament worldview, is other religions are not just equally good faith, they're all trying to do good for humanity, but that alternative faiths are, they, their origin is from Satan.

And that the whole design is to move people away from the true God that gives life and try to put them into bondage to the devil and demons.

And so when you look at bale worship, that's in fact what you see. This whole movement around the world to try to get people to go back to their old faith and it, it all gets cleaned up for Western ears. So in Western culture, we're most influenced in our history by what religion? Christianity and so Christianity has had a huge impact on Western culture, and we're still feeling the waves of the 1st and 2nd great a great awakenings and so there's things that happen in our culture that we just think we do because we're good Americans but no it's because we have this history of revivals in our background that have still lasted to this day.

and so when, when we bring our pluralism and we try to say, hey, everybody's got something to offer, what happens normally is it gets baptized in Christianity and that's what gets presented to us, Ravi Zacharias, when he's talking about like Eastern faiths that have become very popular. I need to stop moving around, sorry. The Eastern faiths that have become very popular, he calls it, Westernism. Westernism is what we do is we'll take the things in Buddhism that we like and the things in Hinduism that we like, we baptize it in Western philosophy and Christianity, and that's what gets presented to our culture as Buddhism and Hinduism.

And so our people think, oh wow, Buddhism's really cool and Hinduism's really cool, but we've gotten rid of all the bad aspects of it. And Christianized it and so we think, all right, I wanna reject the faith of my fathers, which is a real tendency of young people, and I'm gonna go to Buddhism, but they're not going to Buddhism, they're going to a, a, a, a Buddhism that's been baptized in Christianity or Hinduism that's been baptized. Same thing's going on down in South America, not that we're pro-Roman Catholic, but I think it's a lot better than the Aztec religion.

And they're, they, they show all these like wonderful pictures of their Aztec warriors and all that stuff.

Has anybody ever, ever studied The Aztecs or the Mayans or the Incas. Yeah, Yeah, so yeah, they'll, they, they sacrifice to the, the sun god. I always forget how to pronounce his name. but my son did a report, several years ago on, on some of the goings-ons with the Aztec religion.

And a real popular part of their worship was to take a child, you bring them up to the place of sacrifice. And you try to, the, the priest would be just dressed in the most horrific garb possible because the more tears you could get from the child, the more pleased that God would be. So imagine my little, my little guy, my, my 8 year old Samuel, who's being brought to the top of a of a pyramid, and he's being scared to death by a priest who's about ready to rip his heart out, and they let this go on for as many hours as possible to get as many tears out of the young kid so that it will please their God.

Then they'd take a knife, rip his heart out, present it up to the God, and then let the body fall down.

The reason that the stairs are so steep is to make sure that the bodies would roll to the bottom. Does that sound like a, a pluralistic, like, hey, this is just like our God. No. And so that stuff gets all washed out and we hear about all of the wonderful architecture and high level of astronomy and and the way that their cities were organized, which is really truly amazing.

It is true that the Aztec culture was really incredible when it came to their knowledge and stuff like that. But that, that's the thing that is that we forget is, is if we, if we really understand culture from, from, if we do our sociology through a Christian worldview, we're gonna find that two things are always true of any culture that you're gonna go to in the world. One of the things you're gonna find of every culture in the world is you're gonna find some good, incredible things.

Why are you gonna find amazing, incredible good things in every culture?

Say it again. Man is made in the image of God. So everywhere you go, regardless of whether they've come into contact, they've totally forgotten about Yahweh, every culture will have wonderful things because they're made in God's image and they cannot help but reflect God's image. And so even though there's some horrible things about Aztec culture, there's things that you study that you're just like, it just blows your mind.

How could they possibly have known this? One is because ancient people aren't as dumb as we think they are. They really got a lot of information from Adam and Noah and on down the line. they're incredibly smart.

But you're also gonna see a second thing about just about every culture you ever go to. And what's that second thing? Say it again. Depravity.

Everybody has depravity in their hearts. And when you're in a culture where there's no natural or what we would call supernatural restrainers of depravity, it always gets more and more wicked. So when you, so if you don't have the word of God being preached, you don't have prophets, you don't have any of those types of things that will restrain sin. Then you ultimately end up with the culture the way it was before the flood, where it gets so wicked that God just has to destroy it.

Imagine how wicked the pre-flood culture must have been if God hasn't really, he didn't destroy the Aztec culture the same way he did destroyed the pre-flood people. there's no cultures have incurred the type of wrath that the pre-flood people incurred. How wicked must that culture have been. To incur that wrath.

When you look at just the scope, right? And so every culture has image of God stuff, depravity, and when we don't have restrainers, the depravity gets worse and worse and worse. And it's not, unless it gets some baptized into the Western or Christian faith that, there's no cleaning up. Same thing the way that we, in our culture tend to look back at like Native American culture and, and approach.

Has anybody ever read Lewis and Clark's original journals? Regian, if you've read Lewis and Clark's original stuff, OK, cool. When you normally think about Lewis and Clark, you just think them going and, and they get helped by, Sacajawea, right? So Sacajaweass, and they're just going from tribe to tribe and learning, and everybody's really nice to them, and everything's cool.

one of the first tribes that they came into contact with just were, were trying to get Lewis and Clark and their whole group to sleep with all of their wives. Because they believed that these guys were really super powerful and if they could get them to sleep with their wives, they could get their power from them. Have you ever read that in your public school textbooks? No.

And yet that, that was a consistent tale. When you go from tribe to tribe to tribe, you would see amazing things that reflected the image of God, and then you would see incredible depravity. Just over and over and over again. Same thing when Margaret Mead did her study of the Samoan Islands.

Anybody ever read about Margaret Mead? Any sociology people? Yeah, so Margaret Mead gives this wonderful glorified picture of how everybody was so happy on the island, total fabrication. No, it was miserable.

They knew that their adultery and their fornication and everything that was going on, but she tried to portray it as it was wonderful and good. Like baptized it into Christianity, presented it to the world in her research, just turns out that all of her research was full of lies. She was projecting her view, worldview, trying to project it out to the academic society. So I'd like to say here we have GR Boam comes along, we have El King.

who gets judged by God, but after, actually, really, he's, God has lots of, lots of time of grace before the judgment falls. Let's turn to First Kings 16:25. So anyway, I just gave you guys my sociology lesson through a biblical worldview for free. No charge.

1 Kings 16:25. Amri did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did worse than all who were before him. Well, for he walked in all the ways of who? Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, and in his sin, by which he made Israel sin, provoking the Lord God of Israel to anger with their idols.

So whenever you guys see idols, from this point on in the rest of your life, I don't want you to just think of some little idols like you see in the movie Gladiator. Have you guys seen the movie Gladiator? He's got these little idols, almost like they're little pictures of his life that he pulls out to look at his, that's a complete fabrication of what we're talking about when we talk about idols. Every time we see idols in the Bible, I want you to think of sexual perversion.

I want you to think of children being prostituted into that God. many times human sacrifice, all of these things that demons demand and trying to pull people away from ultimately from worship of Yahweh. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about idols.

and we'll, we'll talk about some of the perversion here in just a second. Verse 27. Now, the rest of the Acts of Amri, which he did and the might that he showed, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel? Well, yes, they are.

So Amri rested with his fathers and was buried in Samaria. so Samaria eventually becomes the capital, right, of the northern tribes. Then Ahab, his son, reigned in his place. So we can, so obviously, this guy did evil in the sight of the Lord, and he was more wicked than whom?

Jeroboam, so that means he's a really, so if somebody says they were more wicked than Hitler, very bad dude. Really, really bad guy. And yet, we do see Almost a statement that sounds like it's positive and the might that he showed. So, even in the, in the crazy wickedest culture, you're gonna see some things they're like, whoa, this guy.

Was a pretty mighty warrior and probably built up some cities and. Did some amazing things. Let's look at 1 Kings 16:29. 1629.

To 33. One of our favorite guys in the Old Testament, right? Anybody, any Ahab fans here? No.

how like sports teams, they always They normally try to pick something really like scary and something fierce, right, except for the angels. I like the angels. But normally they, so, if somebody wanted to like really pick a sports team that was pretty bad, you'd be like the Ahabs. The Ahabs, they're really gonna, they're really mean.

So, in the thirty-eighth year of Asa, king of Judah, Ahab, the son of Amri, became king over Israel, and Ahab, the son of Amri, reigned over Israel and Samaria, 22 years. Why is he in Samaria now? That's now the capital of the northern tribes. It's actually probably 3 different capitals in the, in the history of the northern, but we're at the Sumeria time now.

So Ahab, the son of Amri did what? Evil in the sight of Yahweh more than all who were before Him. He's worse than Hitler, worse than Jeroboam, bad guy. And it came to pass as, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabat.

That he took as wife, Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. So no big deal, it's a trivial thing. And the fact that it's, it, it's speaking of him marrying Jezebel as like this really, really bad event in Israel's history because of, she's like a full-on Baal worshiper, right? So he starts worshiping Baal, verse 32.

Then he set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. And Ahab made a wooden image. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him, and so on. So again, we did our little survey of Baal worship a few weeks ago, maybe 3 or 4 weeks ago.

If you were in Israel at this time, why might you be attracted to Baal worship? Say it again. Yeah, total sexual freedom, right? So things aren't really going too well with your spouse at home.

You guys aren't getting along. Well, guess what? You can go down to the Baal Temple, actually worship Baal by having any assortment of sex you want, and Bale will be happy with you. Sounds like a little bit today.

Also, if you worship Baal, you have approval of the king and his wife Jezebel. Also, is Baal worship a coming a Johnny come lately religion? So, this is old-time religion, right? So it has that appeal.

there was one other thing. Oh, well, Bale, he's the guy that's supposed to help with fertility and rain, and so he helps your business, right? So if you worship Bale, do you expect that your business is gonna go well. One of the things I require of all the taco shops that I go to, to consider them a legitimate taco shop is they must have the little idol to the saint of good business.

I forget what that saint's called. Do you guys remember? So if you go to a good taco shop. They will have like the little icon for that saint, and he's the saint of good business, right?

That's when you're in a good taco shop. I'm not saying that we should worship that saint. I'm not approving of praying to the saints, but there's several things that you must have in a good taco shop. When you walk in, if the letters A, that's all right.

If it's B, probably a little better. If, if the, if the person that's taking your order does not speak English, two thumbs up. If they have the big barrels of horchata not just coming out of like a, little fountain thing, that's good. And if they have that Mexican Coke, right?

Mexican Coke, if they make menudo once a week, very good, very good. But most of the really good taco shops do have the little idol too, and the reason they have them there is because that saint is supposed to give them good business. And so you'll notice sometimes they'll, they'll drop a coin or something up there on his little ledge, hoping, and that's the idea of bal worship, not, I'm not saying that that's as extreme, but Baal was gonna bless your farming, bring rain, give you good business.

So this would make you inclined.

If Ahab and Jezebel are saying, hey, we approve of this message, bale worship, 2 thumbs up. Then there's lots of reasons why Israel would follow, follow suit, and they did. And so he obviously is considered. Not just a bad king, but he's the guy that after Jeroboam, everybody else is kinda like, Ahab was the worst.

So if you were living during the the days of Ahab. it's bad news. Let's take a look at 2 Kings 10. We'll talk about did Jehu, we'll talk about Jehu.

2 Kings 10, right? 10:31. Are you guys getting encouraged yet? It's depressing, huh?

this is the same people that God pulled out of Egypt with all those, remember the 10 plagues and going through the Red Sea and all that. How many generates and then, underneath David and Solomon, we're only about, I forget what it is. Is it about 150 years from the days of Solomon? And this is This is what we're in.

Things have declined significantly. 2 Kings 10:30 and following. And the Lord said to Jehu, because you have done. Where, where are we at?

Are we on this, am I in the right place? OK. Jehu, because you have done well in doing what is right in my sight and have done, to the house of Ahab all that was in my heart, your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the 4th generation. But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord of Israel with all of his heart, and he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin.

So now we, we get to a guy that is a little bit of a mixed character. God rose him up and he said, I want you to judge Ahab. He does do that. but he does not continue to follow the Lord.

In fact, he follows in the sins of Jeroboam. What does that mean when we see this phrase, he followed in the sins of Jeroboam. That's shorthand for what? OK, not just evil, yeah, it's all gonna be evil, but what specifically are the sins of air bomb?

Yeah, so following the bail. And everything that comes with that, right? So the sexual immorality. Turning away from Yahweh, all that stuff, right?

And the perversion, all the perversion that comes. Comes with that, Let's see, let me make one little comment here. It's We do have to remember when we're looking at the Old Testament, it can fly, it can move so fast, you can almost get the feeling like a few months go by, and then you have the one king and a couple more months go by. But we're talking about lengthy periods of time.

So like when we get to Asa, for instance, he reigned for what, 41 years? Or was it 41? Yeah. So you're talking about a king that reigns like say from the 19, 1960 to 2001.

So imagine having a president from 1960 to 2001, and all the things that can change in a culture. In that time of time, time of period or that period of time. And so if you just even just look back over the United States' history and the swath of time that we have, we can almost, we can forget our own ups and downs as a culture. For instance, when you guys think of, let's say if you're thinking of the 1700s, let's say.

1760s, 1770s, maybe 1750s. Do you think spiritually and do you think? United States is a very conservative moral country, or do you think we're Pretty liberal and immoral and what do you guys, what, what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think the mid 1700s? Liberal, OK, revolution.

What do you think about just our overall spiritual and moral, moral climate? I think it's pretty good, pretty conservative, like beaver family? No? Or you think it's pretty bad?

Yeah, we don't, we don't really remember, a lot of times we, we just think guys wearing wigs, we think Benjamin Franklin. So Benjamin Franklin's around, it must be pretty good. Yeah, yeah, we think, oh yeah, these guys are all right. Well, I, I think it's Jonathan Edwards said that all the young people do.

Is night walking and tavern going. What does that mean? Night walking and tavern going. Cruising and bar hopping.

That's all the young people do. And, and there was such a moral decline in the mid 1700s, people were very worried about what was gonna happen to the culture, because the young people, it was, they were just so immoral, they're just out getting drunk, sexual immorality. a guy like Benjamin Franklin, he was actually promoting the whole concept that you should be a gentleman in public, but whatever you do in private is perfectly OK. If anything about Benjamin Frank Franklin's private life, this guy was very comfortable in France.

Let me just put it that way. Had no problems with French morals. And so in our own culture, there's these ups and downs. If we were to talk about some of those mid-seventeen, we'd, we'd be saying the people of the United States were doing evil on the side of the Lord.

And people had just felt like the Lord was gonna come back or we were talking about the end of the world. But then all of a sudden, The Holy Spirit started to fall through the preaching of guys like Jonathan Edwards, the Wesley's come over, they start preaching. George Whitfield, all of a sudden, the word of God just starts being spread. And we have this thing called the First Great Awakening.

And the first Great Awakening had such an impact on the colonies that a lot of these taverns started closing. And a lot of these night walking youth, youth people just started showing up at church and got very excited about the gospel. And so when we see some of the conservativism that begins to move in American culture and just the Christian thought that began to take hold, yeah, it started back with the Puritans, but it dipped into total immorality and then the Lord just did this amazing work.

And so this is, this is just the ebb and flow of the United States.

So imagine the ebb and flow that we see here on the pages of, of scripture. Let's look at one other king. Here we're talking about Israel. 2 Kings 17:1.

So, 17, 1 and 2, in the 12th year of Ahaz, the king of Judah, Hoshea, The son of Elah Elah became king of Israel in Samaria. There's Samaria again, he reigned 9 years, did evil in the, in the sight of the Lord, but not as the kings of Israel who were before him. OK, so finally, we get a guy that's evil. But not as bad as the guys who came before.

So it's a little bit of a reprieve, right? I don't wanna start naming American presidents cause I don't wanna make anybody mad, but But here's a guy that was there for 9 years. That's about a 2-year term, right? And And so he's still a bad king, but just not as bad.

So in, in your notes, you should see that, so this is just a sampling of about, we're talking about 19 kings, and at least in the northern tribe, do we get anybody who's described as just A follower of the Lord, like this king did good in the eyes of the Lord. No, the curse of Jeroboam reigns throughout the kingly lines in the north. And so you just, even, aside from what the minor prophets are gonna begin to prophesy, you just get a feeling that things are not going good. As you're reading through these lists of kings, you start thinking, oh boy, the curses of Deuteronomy 28 are starting to fall.

Go back and look at Deuteronomy 28 sometime. And see what the Lord promised that would happen to Israel if they walked away from him and walked back into idol worship and all of the evil that goes with that. In Deuteronomy 28 is one of the scariest chapters in the Bible. Make a pretty good horror film, actually.

And And so you have all that, so you, you just start smelling Deuteronomy 28. And sure enough, 722 BC it actually happens in a few waves, but Assyria comes down and just, just decimates. The northern tribes. Takes most of them up into captivity, forces a lot of them to intermarry just to try to wipe out the bloodline, and actually they're very successful, right?

So let's see. What else shall we say about this first section? I guess, what are some characteristics of God that we see? As we look at the Kings of Israel.

What are some things that we're seeing about God? We are, actually are seeing grace. I think that's a big attribute. It's hard if, if we don't keep in mind the timelines we're talking about, we can forget that.

But we're seeing God delay. He keeps sending prophet after prophet to warn the tribes. And we know his character, right? What did God do when Nineveh repented?

Yeah, he relented, right? You see all kinds of examples of that. And so the Lord keeps sending a prophet, he sends another prophet, and it's many, many years until finally the hammer comes down from Assyria. And it was, it was a slaughter.

so we see grace, we also see God's holiness. We see his jealousy, right? Appropriate jealousy for his name and for his people. He's very jealous for, his people Well, let's take a look at Now, the southern kingdom.

So Judah And let's open up to, so we got about 15 minutes. Let's open up to 2 Chronicles 12. I'd like to spend some extra time on AA. 2 Chronicles 12:1, and then we'll look over at verse 12 to 142.

Now it came to pass when Reaboam had established the kingdom and had strengthened himself. That's not me, is it? Oh sorry. and strengthened himself.

And that he forsook the law of the Lord and all Israel along with him. So this can be confusing because Israel, in one sense, talks about just the northern tribes. But even if you're down in Judah, Israel sometimes can be used as a synonym for the people of God that are in Judah, right? so look at, let's look at 12 to 14 now, skip, we're gonna skip ahead.

When he humbled himself, The wrath of the Lord turned from him. I'm sorry. Yeah, so this is after Shake Shack came down to, to Jerusalem and. The wrath of the Lord turned from him so as not to destroy him completely, and things also went well in Judah.

Thus, King Royalboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem and reigned. Now, Reaboam was 41 years old when he became king, and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem, the city which the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. His mother's name was Nehemah, and Ammonitas. And he did evil because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord.

and then we see that. his goings on are also written elsewhere. So Reaboam, he does evil in the sight of the Lord, but As God is bringing judgment down, he does slowly start to turn, the Lord lifts the judgment, but never really Fully, follows. the Lord, And what is the, what capital do we see down in the south?

What's the consistent capital? Yeah, so we've got Jerusalem down there. any other thoughts you guys have on Rayboam? Who's his, opposite character in the North again?

Jerbo, Jerobo, Reabo. I remember Rayboum's the guy that wouldn't listen to the counselors and, so that's what led to the whole rebellion type thing. but Reaboam does at least stay on the throne down in the south. So let's talk, we'll probably finish up with just Aa, So we might have time to get some more, but let's, let's open up the First Kings.

15. And if you want to later in this week, you could also check out Asa in 2 Chronicles chapter 14 to 16. But we're gonna look at what's said of him in First Kings. Let's go 1 Kings 15.

Verse 9. And following. And let's start actually in verse. 8 So Abbajam, I like that name, Abbijam.

That'd be a good like a DJ name, don't you think? Aberjam. Reed with his fathers, and they buried him in the city of David and Asa, his son reigned in his place. In the 20th year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Asa became king over Judah, and he reigned 41 years in Jerusalem.

His grandmother's name was Meaa, the granddaughter of Abish Alom. Now, some of your translations probably say that she's the mother. Raise your hand if your translation says mother. Raise your hand if your translation says grandmother.

OK, that's cause, just in the Hebrew idiom, you can call a grandmother a mother, right? You can call a great grandfather a father. Yeah, but we know from the genealogy that she actually is the, the grandmother. Then verse 11, Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did his father David.

Breath of fresh air. All right. Finally, we get somebody who's being said they did right. And he banished the perverted persons from the land and removed all the idols that his father made.

Now the perverted persons, many of you have a different Idea there in your translation, it probably says like male cult prostitutes or something like that. Is that what you guys see? And that's exactly what we see here. Now, the Bible actually tends to default to give us less information than more when it comes to the perversion that's being spoken of.

Why would the Bible talk about idolatry and talk about perversion, but not really give a lot of details. Why would it do that, Dan? So Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, not to incite our own imagination.

Yes, sir. Yeah, probably not to get us too focused on it. But also, I, I think you guys tell me what you think. the majority of the people in the original audience wouldn't have needed a very much of a description because they've seen it.

so when they're talking about bale worship, we all need a historical overview of what that means. The, the original readers did not need that. They knew how insidious bale worship was. but this is one of the few places where you actually get a description, not because it wasn't there in the other instances, but probably because it was so much more prevalent at this time.

So ASA banishes the male cult prostitutes that were going on in this, which almost certainly includes children because that was part of the, the practice. Verse 13. also, he removed Meaka, his grandmother, from being queen mother. The Hebrew here is interesting.

It's like mega mom. She's like the mega mom because she had made an obscene image of Ashra and Asa cut down her obscene image and burned it by the brook Kidron. So if, if he wanted to be, if any, if there's any temptation to be, to practice nepotism, this is grandma for heaven's sakes. You would think he would give her a pass.

But, no, grandma's obscene image is going bye-bye. when we talk about obscene image. I don't know how many of you have been In college, have any of you studied any of, taken like a world religions class and studied any of the obscenities of the ancient world? Raise your hand if you have.

OK. So if you've done a little bit of studies on that, that phallic type of idols were very, very popular. This is almost certainly what this is. And so they're worshiping a phallic type of image, setting it up before all of Israel.

So this was very, very common to have pornographic types of images, involved in the worship. And so, and this is being set up by grandma, so you can see what culture we're living in here. And so AA says, not gonna do it. And so it is cut down.

Then verse 14, you have an interesting qualification, but the high places were not removed. Nevertheless, Asa's heart was loyal to the Lord as all his days. Now, if you look over at 2 Chronicles, it says that Asa did remove the high places. Here it says he didn't remove the high places.

Why do we see this apparent contradiction in scripture? Yeah. That would be a good guess. No, but Asa's all in the south.

He doesn't have anything to do with the North. So it, it is in the south. so in Chronicles, it says he did in First Kings, it says he didn't. Any other, that's a good guess though.

Any other Ideas and why the apparent contradiction. OK, that'd be a good guess. Maybe at the time that the of writing, he did it, but later on he did when First Kings was written. OK.

This is where some historic background does help us. the high places before, you have the building of the temple is, it was not uncommon for people to worship Yahweh at various high places throughout Israel and Judah. And, but also when bale worship and other, other cults were established, those cults would more often than not be worshiped. The worship would occur on high places.

And so, most commentators would argue, and I would agree that Asa removed the bal worship high places but did not remove the worship of Yahweh on those high, on the various high places. So that would be the explanation for the apparent contradiction. so, really, where was Yahweh, according to the law, where was he to be worshiped at this time? Jerusalem.

So really, by the letter of the law, he should have been worshiped only in Jerusalem. but there were very few kings that Insisted upon that, or it could be just administratively the ACA just never got around to it, that he was so busy with his iconoclastic destruction of bail worship, that in his administration, he just never got to it. That's one possibility, but that's why the apparent contradictions. Does that make sense?

So when it, a lot of times you, you, you'll see a lot of these kings, they'll be some commendation of them and it'll say, except they didn't remove the high places. And so that, that seems to be what most, most people would suggest. Verse 15, he also brought into the house of the Lord the things which his father had dedicated and the things which he himself had dedicated, silver, gold, and utensils. And so I think we're, we're gonna stop there.

That's where our curriculum stops with ASA. So he, he does what's right in the Lord. He does, he goes around and he basically He is not a pluralistic king. and we do need to remember that this is a theocracy, right?

This is not, we're not living in like today where we have separation of church and state, which we should really praise the Lord for. this is Israel, a theocratic kingdom that God had established, and Asa has the right to enforce Mosaic law in, in, in Israel or Judah. And so he does so. He gets rid of the temple prostitution, he gets rid of the veil worship, he brings everybody back to following Yahweh, except he does allow some of these clubs that are worshiping Yahweh outside of Jerusalem.

And so that's the one qualification in his, in his life. Now, if you were to follow up on ASMA we'll try to pick this up next week. Does everything go really, really good with Asa his whole life? Yeah, unfortunately not.

Sometimes you wish the Bible would just end. Why don't you just cut it off right there? like some of these movies, you see all these things and conflicts and everybody comes together and then there's a marriage, the end. It's like, well, let's just leave it with a happy ending.

We like Pride, one of the things, reasons we like Pride and Prejudice is it ends a very happy ending. We don't see like 30 years of struggle in marriage, right? It ends in a wedding, and we're very happy and we're like, wow, that was very fulfilling. But the Bible doesn't do that.

The Bible says that Asa was very good in the eyes of the Lord. He did things according to his David. But then it throws in all these complicated factors towards the end of his life. And so why does the Bible do that?

Why does the Bible take its heroes? And we're, we're ready to just say, yeah, all right. We love Asa. And then it just kinda takes the hero and kinda tells you.

Some of the other nonsense that happened in his life. Why does the Bible do that? Say it again. That's real life, right?

even like historically, we've got to be careful when we start studying church history. Sometimes we've got our, our heroes, and we'll kinda like to talk about all the great and grand things they did, and then we'll kinda sweep their little sins and problems that they had with their children or their wife and marriage and sweep that under the carpet. but. Real life happens.

And I think one of the themes that we have in the Old Testament is don't get too attached to one king, because the only, the only faithful king is gonna be Jesus Christ. And so as soon as you get excited about one guy, something happens and you're looking at, you're still looking to the future, right? And eventually that becomes Jesus. And so, the only real hero on the page of the scripture is God, Yahweh, and then he sends his Son Jesus Christ.

And so we're always left a little bit dissatisfied with the human prophets, human kings, and I think that's very, very intentional. And we need to, I think we'll, we'll end with these applications. I think when we look at what we're seeing when the King, with the Kings, we need to be very careful that we're not overly influenced by leaders and, and things in our lives. Try to help our kids not get too attached to movie stars, music people, even Christian stars, right?

I, I, I'll find myself. sometimes getting really attached to a Christian sports figure, like, hey, they know the Lord, and then you'll find out, I remember I was really attached to this one particular Christian sports figure and I was so excited about their testimony and they were very vocal with their faith. And then I found out they went and saw What's that movie, Shades of Grey, or is that what it's called? So they went and saw that movie and then had a glowing report of the film.

I'm like. you've just ruined my idolatry. I just, I thought you were such an incredible testimony, and, we have to, we have to be careful about our own heroes and, and, and really fix our eyes on Christ that everybody around us is broken and they're gonna sometimes we're gonna do well and sometimes, when we get to the end of our lives, people tend to always tell a glowing report, right? But even the most godly persons whose funeral you attend, there's always gonna be something on the back of the head of the children or the spouse where they, they remember certain sins.

And, but hopefully, they, they remember Christ, the, the forgiveness more. And then we'll say this lastly. Give those of you that are parents here or whenever you have parents, or whenever you have kids, try to give your kids the gift. Of a Of, of them seeing a mom or dad that can repent publicly before the family.

There's a lot of times where the pastors here will be doing premarital counseling, and sometimes you'll get a spouse that says, I never saw my mom and dad ever fight. They just always got along. They just loved each other. And then they get married and, and they start having fights with their spouse and they're just like, what in the world is going on with my life?

My parents never fought. No, your parents never fought in front of you. I'm sure they, they fought in private and, but I think one of the gifts that we can give to our kids is to, we don't have to be perfect parents, but To demonstrate before them a humility that you're willing to confess your sin to your kids, willing to, to let your kids know that, hey, mommy and daddy are having some issues, but we're praying. As, as they get older, I think it's very appropriate to ask your teens, your teens to, hey, let's pray together, we've got some struggles going on as a family, we need your prayers.

just recently, I was sat down by teenagers and was confessed, the Lord's just been opened up some things in my eyes where I'm just like seeing some real neglect and gaps I've left and, and I was just confessing some sin to them recently. And not because I'm like, wow, I'm really excited to go confessing to my kids. I was just, the Lord was just breaking me. And, and I just feel like I've got to do this and for their sake and, and praise the Lord.

He granted me the humility to talk to them and they were very open and And it's not like I wanted to be in that position, but I'll tell you what, I'm, I'm grateful for the fact, I, I, I want my kids to be able to see a growing dad, not a perfect dad, but hopefully, when they get into adult life, they'll look back and be like, my mom and dad weren't perfect, and there were times where they, my dad was a knucklehead. But what, my dad, he would come and apologize to me and ask for, for my forgiveness.

I remember seeing my dad cry over his sins. and that's something that we, I think we can learn from the Old Testament is there's no perfect character except for Christ.

He's the only hero. And so we always wanna push our children, the people that are following us to Christ. And, and just ask the Lord to continually give us broken hearts and a willingness to admit our own failures and sins because they're there. even any, Pilgrim Progress fans?

Anybody of you guys love reading Pilgrim's Prog who's read like all of Pilgrim's Progress? All right, good. I wanna see every hand up at the end of the year. That's this awesome book.

That is the reason I, I commend Pilgrim's Progress. Other than the Bible, the number one book you should read is Pilgrim's Progress, is it's so real. These guys are just so real. Even Christian, when he gets to the very end of his life, you think after everything he's been through, he should just march right into heaven.

He tries to cross the river and he starts doubting and he's sinking, he's like, oh, no, and you think he's gonna die, right at the end. And then he just has to, I think it's hope reaches down, the Lord just pulls him up out and then gets him to the other side. So even at the end of our lives, it's just by the grace of God that we get into heaven. And And so we just need to remember that's, that we're just, we're just clinging to Christ, clinging to Christ.

That's what it's all about. Let's go ahead and pray, we're over time, so I'll see if I can bring you guys some donuts next week. Lord, we thank you for just your word. And when we look at the pages of the Old Testament, sometimes it can be very depressing to see people, just generations that are lost and following after false gods, but yet we see your holiness, we see your patience, your mercy, and we see this remnant, we see this red thread just running throughout the Bible, just Trying to move us to look to Jesus, look to Jesus.

And so when we see that our lives are also complex and complicated like ACE's life, Lord, we look to you. Help us point our children to you. 0.1 another to you. It's not about us.

It's all about you, your kingdom, your mercy, love. I thank you for this time we've had together. And as you be with us as we, worship and hear your word preached in Christ's name. Amen.