Answers Bible Curriculum: Lesson 9 - The Kingdom is Divided

Lord, thank you so much for this time for us to be together to study your word. Thank you, Lord, for just the, the wisdom that we receive from your written word. And the wisdom that we see even in the, in the text that we're going to study this morning. We ask that you would open up our eyes.

It can be very easy for us to be dulled. Even as we're reading the text of scripture, and so we need the aid of your spirit. we pray, Father, Lord, that you'd have your way with us. Bless all of our classes, the other adult class, the, The children's classes, bless their teachers.

Help us to grow in you in Christ's name, we pray. Amen., there's a A Peanuts cartoon. Has Lucy and Linus. And Lucy is telling Linus the story of King Midas.

And she says, And then the king, everything that the king touched turned to gold. But then on the next day, and Linus says, stop right there. I don't need to hear the rest of the story. So I know where this is going.

These stories always backfire. And, and that's what we see in today's text. We're gonna be picking up in 1 Kings 11 and 12. And if you remember way back to last year in, in the 1st 10 chapters of 1 Kings, things are going very well.

Solomon has received wisdom from the Lord. the Lord is expanding his kingdom, in his wisdom, in his possessions, and these are all viewed as good things, good developments. But then we get to chapter 11. And we read in the opening part of the chapter, but Solomon loved many foreign women and things just began to spin completely out of control.

How do, fairy tales normally end? And they lived happily ever after and that would be wonderful to get to chapter 11. You'd almost expect that everything that's happened up to the 1st 10 chapters, you'd expect at the end of chapter 10, and they lived happily ever after. That's not what happens.

It's actually the beginning of a very dark period in Israel's history, and it begins with the idea Solomon loved many foreign women. On the behind me, we've got this basic question of who would be the perfect king. And as we're gonna see this morning, Solomon is not that perfect king. Jeroboam is not that perfect king.

Reaboam. We're gonna see many different kings that do not answer the call, but there's one that does, that's Jesus Christ. Let's do, we're gonna do a little bit of review. I know that it's been a while, but there's so much good material in today's text.

I'm gonna try to bust this through the review pretty quickly. again, this is, we're going through the Answers Bible curriculum. The basic idea of all of our adult Sunday school is this, it's a para-family ministry designed to come alongside of our families in their journey from brokenness to wholeness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're not trying, we don't see ourselves as replacing what mom and dad are intended to do at home.

We just want to come alongside. I, for one, I'm actually grateful. That my children are hearing from other teachers other than me. Cause, my kids at this age, we, we'll be having family devotions and what they're hearing sometimes is Charlie Brown's teacher.

They're just hearing wa wa wa wa wa wa and then they go in and they listen to Matt or Sierra or, or Kumi and Lynette and they say the exact same thing I say and then they come home, hey, what we learned in Sunday school today? And it's very tempting for me to say, well, that's what I've been telling you for about 3 years now, right? But the Lord's using different people with different gifts. So we're very thankful to come alongside our families in that way.

The particular quarter that we're in is called wisdom from God. Again, Answers Bible curriculum is a chronological study from Genesis Revelation. And we're in a period of Old Testament history that we're gonna call the divided kingdom or we're beginning the divided kingdom. Answers Bible curriculum actually divides up all of Bible history into seven different Cs, what we call the seven C's of history.

Does anybody remember what the first C is? Good. We got creation. And then we have Corruption The third C is Catastrophe.

So that's the flood. The 4th C. Confusion, that's the Tower of Babel. We have the nations divided.

That really takes us to the rest of the Old Testament. Then we get to the 5th C. Can't say it's Yeah, so it's Christ. So, Mary, gives birth to Christ.

The 60. Yes, the cross, and then 7th. Consummation. So that's the return of Christ and everything, getting wrapped up.

So we'll, we'll review that here and there on our way through the curriculum. one of the things, I like to do is to talk about the, the nine periods of, of Israel's history. So we'll just do this real quick. This is something that I'll email to you guys in a, in a future packet that gives us the basic.

periods of the Old Testament. And I don't know if you guys remember last year we did this little memory device, 1 bun, 2 shoes, 3 trees. Anybody remember that? Raise your hand and make me feel good.

Raise your hand if you remember that. OK, some of you guys. So if you can have this image in your head from 1 to 9, you can go to 1 to 10, but we don't need the 10th 1. there's just 9 periods of Israel's history.

And so when we think of one bun, in my mind, I'm drawing this hamburger bun with the sesame seeds from stars and a moon and a sun. And what does this remind us of? It's already up there. Beginnings.

OK. And then 2 shoe. Can anybody tell me right out the gate, patriarchs, Justin, justice has it. So 2 shoe, remind you that's Father Abraham inside of a shoe, the patriarchal period.

33. Exodus. Nice. We've got an exit sign on a tree.

This reminds us of the Exodus period. 4 door. Anybody know It's the conquest period. You think of a door, the walls around the door have fallen down, which reminds us of the conquest of Canaan.

So Jericho, the walls came tumbling down, right? The walls came tumbling down. Whoops, I already gave it to you. 5 hive.

The judges, this is an unwise judge who is Hammering a beehive for some reason. Does that reminds you of the, the, hive period or the judge, judge's period. 6 sticks. United Kingdom.

So here's David rocking out. He's got two sticks together. So the sticks remind you that it's 6, the 6th period, 6 sticks. The sticks are together because this is the United Kingdom.

We haven't had the civil war yet. 7th heaven. You might know. Divided kingdom.

So this is a crown on a cloud, which is supposed to represent heaven. I, I know it's not theologically correct, but the divided kingdom is now the division between Reabo and Jeroboam and all the further division that we're gonna see after this. 8 gate. Anybody know what period of Israel's history that is, or Old Testament history?

Say it again. Exile, yes, we've got the exilic period. So this is a, a very disappointed Hebrew that has been carried off into captivity. So the exilic period is when Israel in 722 BC and then Judah in 586 BC are carried off into captivity.

And then after captivity comes the final period of Old Testament history, which is what? We can call it, yeah, the return or the post-exilic period. This is 9 dime. This is a dime-headed Hebrew guy coming back from Persia, back into the land of the post-exilic period.

This would be books like Ezra and Nehemiah, right? one more. That's just Ezra and Nehemiah with Arubabel in there. No, I think Malachi is pre, Malachi is a little bit before the The exile.

Haggai? The Haggai to northern tribes of Israel. That's during the divided kingdom. But you guys have the right idea.

You start, once you have this outline, then you can start hanging your minor and major profits onto the outline. So Ezra Nehemiah would be your, your big post-exhilic. Books. All right.

So this morning, let's go ahead and open up the First Kings. We're gonna pick it up. With Really the the move into the divided kingdom. And A lot of times when I start studying or getting ready for these lessons, like I'm, I'm thinking about, oh, Solomon and his foreign wives in the divided kingdom.

Oh joy, oh joy. but then you start studying the text and seeing what the Lord's doing. And there is some amazing stuff here. There's some really sad things.

But there are some really amazing things that we see God doing. And some amazing reminders of His grace. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna kick it off in chapter 11. We're gonna read verse 1 to 13.

We're gonna go back and ask some questions of the text as we do in this class. We want to do the best we can. To take our meaning from the text because we want to do what, what exegesis or I just gave it away. What hermeneutics do we want to apply to the text?

Do you want to do X Jesus or I of Jesus? We do ex Jesus, which means we want to get the meaning out of the text. What did it mean to its original audience, original authors, and what is God intending for us today? Is of Jesus is, we already have some preconceived ideas of what we think the text should mean, and we try to find it in the text.

So we always wanna do ex of Jesus as opposed to I of Jesus. What do we want to do? Jesus. We don't want to do.

Is of Jesus, right? We want to pull it out of, we want to do the best we can to not just put our preconceived ideas. Into the text and you might think, oh, Pastor Mike, I never do that. No, we do that all the time and I could give you some examples as we move through the The text.

Let's start in verse one. But Solomon Loved many foreign women. As well as the daughter of Pharaoh. Yeah, I think, I like the NIS that I think says NAS in addition to his love for Pharaoh.

Anybody have the new American standard out there? Along with. So yeah, that's probably better. The idea is more like that.

Women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Cydonites, and the Hittites. From the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, quote, You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you, surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Solomon clung to these in love, and he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. I don't know about you, but I've never met anybody who had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

But Solomon did. We'll come back and talk about that verse 4. For it was so when Solomon was old that his wives turned his heart after other gods. And his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David.

For Solomon went after Ashtareth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milam, the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord and did not fully follow the Lord as did his father David. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the people of Ammon. And he did likewise for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrifice to their gods.

So the Lord became angry. So what was the response to, Solomon, loving his foreign wives, building temples, building, he's now become very ecumenical and pluralistic. He's much more open-minded to the various religions and faiths. The Lord's response, Boy, Solomon, I'm really glad that you're much more ecumenical and pluralistic and much more open-minded to other faith concepts and approaches to religion.

Yeah, coexist. No, the Lord's response, the Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord, God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. So, he's angry with him and it seems like the fact that God had appeared to him and given him special revelation two different times compounds the Lord's anger. And had commanded him verse 10 concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods, but he did not keep what the Lord had commanded.

Therefore, the Lord said to Solomon, so now here's a 3rd special revelation. So you and I normally, it, it doesn't seem like we get this communication these days. We, we have the full complete revelation of the Bible. We're not really living in days where God doesn't regularly show up to me at 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning and say, Mike, I want you to teach this.

I've got his word But here, the Lord shows up probably through a prophet and says, because you have done this and have not kept my covenant, my statutes which I commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. Nevertheless, I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father, David. I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away the whole kingdom.

I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen. So some very interesting turns here. We have Solomon not having the happy ending story as he, he does things in his lifetime that he was told not to do and then it catches up to him in his old age. In his old age, it begins to catch up to him.

He actually begins to become pluralistic, to build houses of worship for his wives. it angers the Lord. The Lord sends a prophet, tells him, here's gonna be the consequence. But then suddenly the name of David jumps into this narrative.

What is that all about? Why is God remembering David? And And actually having mercy upon Israel for David's sake. So let's go back and ask some questions.

Of the text here, And actually, what, let's read verse 14 too. Verse 14. Now the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon. Haddad, the Edomite, was a descendant of the king.

And Ed them. So, the next section begins to talk about 3 different Adversaries that God raises up against David. Haddad is the first one and then I forget the name of the second guy, and then Jeroboam. So, Let's ask a few questions here of the text.

How many women did Solomon have as wives and concubines? Say it again. Yeah, so we're talking about 1000. Isn't that excessive?

You think? Yeah, Barbara. Yeah, so the word love is all over this, this text. He did not love the Lord, but he loved his foreign wives.

Some commentators say, well, there's no way he could be googly-eyed over 1000 women. these are just political entanglements. And it is true that Solomon is doing something that for kings would have been very common. It was, Israel's kings were warned not to do this, but in the ancient Near East and really, in many places in history, when a king would make a treaty with another king, they would exchange part of their harem.

And so, Salomon would make a, a treaty with the Ammonites and he would receive 1000 women from the harem. He'd make another treaty and he'd read, not 1000, another 100 women. And so, but what does seem to be clear from the text is that his, the love part of his heart. or his heart was caught up.

It wasn't just political. Otherwise, why use the word love? He was enamored with the idea of women. In fact, in this text, the word heart shows up 5 different times.

And the Bible doesn't use heart the way we use heart. A lot of times we say, hey, don't just follow your head, follow your heart, right? And there's this old baseball movie, I think it's Sandlot where Babe Ruth shows up as a ghost. He talks to the kid and he says, follow your heart, kid, and you'll never go wrong.

And so there's this idea of the emotions and the head, but the Bible has a bigger heart. When the Bible uses the word heart, it's talking about the will, the love, and the thinking. So the brain is the heart in the Hebrew thinking. And so, when it says that his heart, he did not follow the Lord with his heart, the idea is, is, is not just that he didn't have affection, it's like he didn't use his full will, his thinking and his emotions, but he gave his will, thinking, and emotions over to a multitudes of women.

It's actually reminds me of, of the current plague. I, I belong to a I get these emails from an organization that's called The New Drug. Anybody ever seen that? The New Drug?

And the whole idea is, is they're trying to associate pornography with, with drug addiction. And they're saying that today's addiction, the drug that is killing our culture is pornography. And so as much as we would wanna bag on a guy like Solomon. my contention to you is, is that we have men all over our culture, and I would say all over the church that are in love with multiple women.

that this is not something unique to Solomon. This is something that is happening right now. And so just imagine a person who does that every night. And does that for years?

How many thousands of women is he loving or we're seeing the problem even amongst women, and how many men is, is a woman loving other than their, their husband or their betrothed? And so, and what effect? It, it seems to be, if, if we're, if I'm understanding this text correctly. That there seems to have been a gradualness to Solomon's problem.

It's not like he accrued 1000 women all at once. This happened over the course of, hey, this is what all the kings do. I'm making this treaty. I need to do what the other kings do.

He brings in women to his, to his harem. His heart becomes enamored with some of them or just the idea of, of different women or women in general and his lust is, is built up. But it's, how, what does the text tell us about his relative age when things really take a turn? Say it again.

He, he's in his old age. And so, so he's in his old age when he begins to now build temples and, and now he actually begins to participate in, in, in their worship. So the implication seems to be that maybe when he was younger, it was just something that was going, hey, I'm just, I'm just building my harem like any other king would. but by, who knows how long it took for his heart to turn to where suddenly now he became this ecumenical pluralistic king that he would have never imagined that he would have been when he was younger.

Just the gradualness and the subtlety of sin taking over. it's like a pair of eyeglasses. Those of you guys that wear glasses, I don't know if you ever have been reading or trying to do something and all of a sudden your, your lens pops out. Why did your lens suddenly pop out?

Do, do, do glasses just do that? Do they just all on their own, the lenses pop out? Say it again. They're getting older and also, if you guys know anything about glasses, most of these guys, they have little screws right here, right?

And very imperceptibly, over many months, you're cleaning your glasses, or you're closing them, and those little screws just very slowly begin to loosen. And you don't really think about it, and then one day the, it pops out and you're looking around for it. And that's the way sin can, can take us. I'm sure Solomon didn't when he was younger and God had granted him wisdom and when he was seeing the good story, right?

The King Midas, the good part of the King Midas story. I'm sure he wasn't thinking one day I'm gonna be building temples for my foreign wives. But very subtly and very slowly, things begin to take over. And, and the sad thing, the scary thing is, is this happens in his old age.

We tend to think that, foolishness is for the young and then as we get older, we get more wise. That's why a lot of churches, we have, we're real big about youth ministries, right? Real big about young marriage classes, very concerned that young marriages get kicked off in a good way. But I think one of the things that we need to be careful of is we don't forget about our senior citizens or people just as they get older, because, it's the sins of a person's youth that will many times catch them in their old age.

I know I'm not that old. I actually, I'm gonna be turning 50 a year from now. I'm 49. I used to think 50 was like ancient.

And I used to think 40 was ancient, so I can't believe I'm almost 50. but as a 49 year old man, there are choices that I made when I was younger that I pay for today in unique ways. And, and there's ways I can, I can think about that in a biblical or unbiblical way. I can fall into regret or I could, I can allow for those patterns to persist.

but old guys like me and older, we need accountability. We need the gospel as much as any young person. and sad to say, I've known a lot of old people who just crashed and burned towards the end of their lives, that young sins caught them. as they aged.

And those of you guys who are young, get in the habit now of repenting of sin because you're gonna be dealing with this thing called sin and depravity till you're pushing up daisies, right? And so, get into good habits of confessing sin, keeping an open life, walking in humility. When you get to my age, sometimes we, I don't like to eat crows so fast. Sometimes my heart just wells up with pride and the pride of an old man, and I'm speaking of myself, is harder sometimes than the pride of a young man.

It's sometimes harder to say, honey, I was wrong, or this or that. And so we So we've got Solomon here in his old age. Where were these women from? Yeah, so other nations, Egypt, Moab, Ammon, other surrounding nations.

We've talked about why Solomon would take such foreign wives, probably making alliances even though they were warned not to do that. in fact, go, let's go ahead and turn real quick to Deuteronomy 17, just so we can see, there's this 1 Kings 11 seems to make reference. To Deuteronomy 17 and, and probably a few other passages, but at least this one. So let's look at Deuteronomy 17, we'll start in 14 following.

when you come to the land which the Lord your God has given you and possess it and dwell in it and say, I will set a king over me like all the other nations that are around me. Now notice, he doesn't say if you say this, he says when you say this, the if or the when could go either way, but I think when is the right interpretation. You shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses. One from among your brethren, you shall set a king over you.

You may not set a foreigner over you who is not your brother. But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the Lord has said to you, you shall not return that way again. Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself. So there's 3 different things that he's not supposed to multiply for himself.

What are they? Horses, wives, and gold. So he's not supposed to just try to build up Fort Knox. He's not supposed to go out and get as many Ferraris as he can, a horse, right?

Those are basically tanks and Ferraris and things like that. And in the ancient times, and he's not supposed to go out and just accumulate all these models like we see, every time you open up, the internet or whatever, a movie stars off to another woman, right? Or another guy. And so he's not supposed to do that.

So that was clearly a warning. And Solomon would have known that. He knows the law. So, how many of these Three things had Solomon violated.

Yeah, all three of them. Yeah, yeah. And, and then again, these, these foreign women did turn his heart. what was God's response to Solomon's physical and spiritual adultery?

How does God respond? Yeah, he responds in anger. Now, why, why would God get angry? Isn't anger a, a petty sin of the insecure?

Yeah. Packer talks about this Jealous part. All right. The fact is, is because God is righteous, He is right to be jealous.

Because of, of, of two things. One is truth. The other thing is And so Solomon has violated that. It, it is as if I would, would not a man who finds his wife has.

Wrong to just to not care, right? A man is right to care. A man is right to feel. Or vice versa Yeah, totally, because God, right?

Yeah, so God cares. His anger flows out of his jealousy, and we see jealousy right there in the 10 Commandments, right? and so when you think of the word jealousy when it applies to God, we're not talking about a sinful, petty jealousy. We're talking about that God has the right to care over people with whom he has an exclusive relationship with.

And, and the same thing, it holds true, right, in a marriage relationship. I don't know if you've seen some of these commercials. There's one commercial on right now. I think it's about the NFL where a guy and a gal are walking down the street together and some other gal walks, walks by that represents the NFL.

Have you guys seen that commercial? And so the guy turns his head and he's gawking at this other girl and then his girlfriend's like, what are you doing? And whenever you see that portrayed, it always makes the woman look like she's some weaker lesser vessel. Like she's so upset that her guy would be looking at another girl.

Like, how weak this woman must be. Well, how is a woman supposed to react? Is she supposed to be like, hey, cool, I'm so glad you're looking at other women? Or, hey, no problem.

We've got an open relationship. No, it's appropriate. Isn't it appropriate for a woman to be, to have some feeling, emotion if, if her husband is not being faithful to her? this is one of the issues that we see in counseling and, and so on and so forth.

I'm sure many of you have probably experienced it yourselves. If there's some distrust, there's this feeling that rises up. Well, that can go sinful directions, but in the heart of God, he's always pure, he's always holy. his response is anger, which flows out of his jealousy, and then he, but he, but he has this anger that is connected to his faithfulness.

And that is, is that God has made a promise to David, and God has made a promise to David which extends out to the people of David. And so he's gonna render out some punishments here in light of that faithfulness. So notice, When will these punishments happen? So let's look back.

Where does he say it? Verse verse 11, right? Halfway through, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. nevertheless, I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father David.

I will tear it out of your hand, of your son, however, not tear away the whole kingdom. So when is, when is this going to happen? Yeah, so it's gonna happen later. It's not gonna happen right during Solomon's Day.

and he won't take away the whole kingdom. So not now and not all. So why is God handling it in this way according to the text? Because of the covenant promise he made to David.

So the Davidic covenant affects the way that God is going to mete out his justice. So even in his justice, he's showing mercy in this sense. he's still gonna raise up some adversaries for Solomon. We're gonna see that in verse 14, right?

He raises up Haddad, he raises up Jeroboam, there's problems right there. But one of the things that this, this demonstrates for us, in God's economy is our sin is never just our sin. remember in the, in the 10 Commandments, God says that, that sin will affect people the 3rd and 4th generation. It doesn't just affect you.

A lot of times, especially in the West, in our Western mindset, we have this idea that I can do what I want. It's my party. I can cry if I want to, and it has no effect on anybody else. But the biblical mindset is that no, you are connected to humanity.

You're connected to your family, you're connected to people that come after you. And you're connected to people who aren't even born yet. And so Solomon's sin sets in motion these, these consequences that outlast his lifetime. it runs into Jeroboam, Reaboam, and long after that, as we see in the rest of First Kings.

So one of the things that I think we need, one of the takeaways, in my opinion, you can see what you guys think of this, is, is we need to be careful about believing the lie that says I can go sin the privacy of my own closet and it has no effect on anybody else. No, there are consequences. that your family will have as a result of your sinful choices, even though they may never find out about your choices of sin. There are certain consequences that are inevitable.

Let's just talk about the inevitably of, let's say if you're just giving time and heart and energy over to sin, where is your time and heart and energy not going at that time? Well, it's not going to prayer for your kids or your wife, right? It's not going towards your church. It's not going towards the loss.

You're not preaching the gospel, right? In the middle of your sinful choices. And so anytime we give our heart over to other idols, it's never an isolated incident. And yet, we can listen to the voice of our own flesh or perhaps the temptation of the devil, and we can dupe ourselves into thinking that this will only affect me.

This affects nobody else but me. No, it it affects lots and lots of people. Think about the Solomon's choices and how it even affected like say, his concubines. Or these wives?

How many lives, how many lives were affected just by the fact that he had 1000 women in his harem? How many people that were related to those 1000 women were affected by Solomon's choice to have those women in his harem? A lot of times when people are engaging in online pornography, they have this idea that they do it in isolation and privacy and it affects no one. What they don't realize is that pornography fuels the world's sex trafficking movement.

so you talk about the things that are going on around the world with sex trafficking, that is all funded by online pornography. Even if you never take out a credit card, you never pay for a single item. there is advertising. There are things that are happening that fund these types of things, and yet we think it's innocent.

We think it doesn't affect anybody else. not to mention just what, what it's doing to our own hearts, right? To your own heart, we give ourselves over to that. What is the, what is the reason that God did not take the entire kingdom away from Solomon again?

Say it again. Yeah, the promise he made to David. And so we have, this is part of the ray of hope that we have in this text, is that yes, Solomon sinned, yes, he made some terrible choices, and yet God is looking to this promise that he made to David by grace and says, I'm still gonna remain faithful to my people Israel. Notice a couple of fallacies that this text overturns.

a lot of times, one of the things that we hear today is that there's just not enough heroes, not enough good role models. Who is Solomon's role model? Who is his dad? David.

And David was not a perfect role model, but David was a man after God's own heart. David showed Solomon how to repent. David made his own mistakes but demonstrated how to repent. Nowhere in this text, we see God saying, Solomon, I see what your problem is.

You had a bad role model. So Solomon is held responsible for his own actions. He was the one who made the choices to go out and violate God's scripture. But we also see here, this text overturns the experimental fallacy.

some people say, well, if only Solomon had had a direct divine experience with God. If he just had some personal revelation from Almighty God, then he would have been able to avoid all the sin. He God's voice twice, personally, before he received the third revelation. And this also, this text also overturns the educational fallacy.

Who was the wisest guy on the planet at the time? Solomon, who had direct divine revelation, who just, who wrote many of the proverbs. Solomon was an incredibly educated person. In, in our, in our mindset, we think, well, if only people had the right education, like the Say no to drugs movement, if we can only show kids an image of a frying egg in a pan, that your brain is gonna fry just like an egg fries in a pan, then they'll all stop doing drugs.

How'd that work? No. There's, there is a heart issue that goes beyond the experience, goes beyond education. It goes beyond just looking to good examples.

I know people who have had tremendous examples in their lives that ran off headlong into sin. There's a heart issue where we need to be confronted with the truth of God's word, overwhelmed with the power of the gospel, and learn how to change our mind and repent on a daily basis. So this is a, let's consider this, 350 years before the Israelites had even asked for a king, God had warned them about the oppression that they would face under a king. and that same warning was reiterated to, to Samuel.

by Samuel when the Israelites sought to, to have a king. And so Solomon comes along, he knew that warning, and yet he chose to go against it. Yeah, we have to be careful. If we think that we've done better than Solomon, we're probably deceiving ourselves, not recognizing how many ways we seek our own idol worship.

Ask yourself, when you read this text, do you say, what a terrible guy. I am better than Solomon. If you look at this text and, and what you walk away with it from this text, if the one lesson that you come away with is Solomon was just a terrible guy and I'm, and, and I'm so much better than him, you're probably missing the point. Solomon.

had a lot of knowledge at his disposal. and you and I, we have the Bible at our full disposal, and we have great teaching in this church. And yet it's befuddling. It's befuddling at times.

I, I, even, even when I consider myself, I've been a Christian since I was 14 years old. And I did not grow up in a Christian family, but I've known the Lord for many years. I've studied the word. I've been to seminary.

I know Greek, I know Hebrew. I've got large portions of scripture memorized. And yet, it's just befuddling how at times, I can be having such a great week and then all of a sudden, I'm like down in some pit somewhere, like the, like like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress. Like what in the world?

How did I get here? And yet there's always this one look, one look back to the Lord. one of the stories I was reading in this book, this is a great commentary on First Kings, Dale Ralph Davies. This guy's just awesome.

This, if you ordered this book and just read it along with reading through First Kings, you would not be disappointed. but he talks about how that his girlfriend at the time, who later became his wife. they, she broke up with him in college and he went to a concert that she was singing in, and he's slouching in the chair and trying not to look at her too much. But then at one point in the concert, their eyes met.

And his best friend was sitting right next to him and he saw that little interchange and his best friend leaned over and gave to him the interpretation. He said, did you see that? He's like, yeah. He goes, there's still hope.

It's like when their eyes met in that concert, it's like he suddenly realized there's still hope for this relationship. And that's the way the Lord gazes at each one of us through Christ. If you've embraced Jesus Christ as your Savior, even if you've fallen in ways, like Solomon or, or ways that can lead you to discouragement or regret, there's one look back to the cross and you see Jesus gazing at you, through his shed blood saying, there's hope. This, this is not over.

the world, the flesh, and the devil does not have you ultimately. And so we see that hope even In this text. so ask yourself, we'll look here at the next passage now, but in a second, where are my affections? Where is my love?

Ask yourself, Solomon, there's a, if you look early in Kings, it says, Solomon loved the Lord with all of his heart. And then when you look here at, at chapter 11, it says Solomon loved many foreign women. Something happened. And this is a, this is a, a warning of God through God's grace for us to look at our own hearts and ask ourselves, where are our affections this morning?

Are we loving the Lord with all of our heart? Or have we given our hearts over to These idols, Spurgeon says that, I think it was Spurgeon, he says that our hearts are idol making factories. You don't have to do anything but just sit around and be a human. And things just pop up.

Things will just suddenly pop up and, and our affections are off in a, in a different direction. And so just ask yourself, where are your affections and look back to Christ this morning. Let's go ahead and let's turn to 1 Kings 12. 1 Kings 12 just, it just reads like a movie.

There's so many places in the Old Testament. I was like, man, if I was a movie maker. I, I turned this one into a movie. we're gonna, we're gonna read, Versus one to about 20.

So we'll read a, a quite a bit of the text and then we'll make some, because of the time, I think we'll make some comments as we're rolling through it. And, so right before this, we've, we've, Solomon has passed away. he has 11 of his children is named Reyaboa. Raaboum went to Checkham.

for all Israel had gone to Shechem to make him king. So what happened when Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, heard it, he was still in Egypt, for he had fled from the presence of the king and had been dwelling there. So what we've skipped by is Jeroboam is one of these guys that the Lord raised up, and a prophet actually came to Jeroboam and said, hey, you're gonna be king. In fact, do you guys remember this story?

The whole Ahijah, Jeroboam thing? OK, it's a crazy story. I gotta tell it. So, so Jeroboam just minding his own business, walking somewhere.

All of a sudden, like it's so common in the Old Testament, this prophet just pops out of nowhere named Ahijah. And from the text, we don't know if he tears up his own cloak or if he tears up Jeroboam, probably his own. So he's wearing this brand new cloak. He tears it into 12 pieces.

So now, Ahijah is standing there in his skivvies, right? He doesn't say that directly, but it's implied. He's just standing there in his underwear now and he, he holds out the cloak to Jeroboam and he says, take 10 pieces. what would you do if, if some guy jumped out of a bush, tore up his clothes, and said, hey, take 10 pieces.

So Jared Boum like takes 10 pieces. And he's waiting for the interpretation, what would you think the interpretation would be? Hey, the textile industry is in trouble. hey, I need some clothes.

Can you get me some clothes? What would be the interpretation? Well, Elijah says, the Lord has brought his judgment against Solomon. He's gonna give 10 of the tribes into your hands and you will be king, but he's gonna reserve 1, for, Reaboam.

And so Jeroboam, takes this. And we're not exactly sure what happens. All we know is that Solomon then tries to kill Jeroboam at some point. It could be that Solomon finds out about the prophecy, but the only way he'd find out about it is through who?

Jeroboam, cause Jeroboam and, and Ehijah were the only ones there. So some people surmise that Jeroboam, even though he was told this would happen later after Solomon's death, he got full of himself, went out and tried to make it happen sooner than the prophecy had indicated, and then Solomon runs him out of town. So he's down in Egypt waiting for Solomon to die or something. So then that brings us to this, this text.

So that's the whole tearing up the clothes prophecy story. Which wouldn't that, wouldn't that be an interesting scene in a movie? Just to see a prophet tear up his clothes and be left in his skivvies. So anyway, they, so, so he finds out that Solomon's dead, verse 3, and they sent and called him.

Then Jeroboam and the whole assembly of Israel came and spoke to Reaboam saying, your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the burdensome service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you. And he said, that's Raya Boum said to them, depart for 3 days and then come back and the people departed. Now people always, the commentators, they always just assume.

That the folks from Israel and Jeroboam, that they're telling the absolute truth, which is befuddling to me. Because how many people show up at like a labor meeting when the laborers show up to talk to their employers, how many of them tell the absolute truth? It's, oh, it's so laborsome. No, no.

Everybody always tries to kinda pad the numbers, right? Even in the media. And so this is probably propaganda. But nevertheless, they're saying, hey, go easy on us and we'll serve you.

Whether that's true or not, we really don't know. but what Reaboam does, starting in verse 6, he consults the elders who stood before his father Solomon while he was still, alive and said, How do you advise me to answer the people? And they spoke to him saying, if you will be a servant to these people today and serve them and answer them and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever. So go easy on them, give them what they're a little bit of what they're asking for, and guess what, you're gonna win them over.

Verse 8, but he rejected the advice which the elders had given him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him, who stood before him. Does this sound like it's going in a good direction? Doesn't sound too good, right? Rejects the counsel of the old, old wise people, goes after his buddies.

These are his drinking buddies, right? And says, hey, What should we do? Verse 9, and he said to them, what advice do you give? How should we answer these people who have spoken to me, saying, lighten the yoke which your father has put on us.

Then the young men who had grown up with him spoke to him, saying, Thus you shall speak to these people who have spoken to you, saying your father made your yoke heavy, so on and so forth. Thus you, you shall say, my little finger, fingers in italics, right? And most of your, it should be in italics in your translations. My little finger shall be thicker than my father's waist.

And now, whereas my father put a heavy yoke on you, I will add to your yoke, my father chastened you with whips, but I will chasten you with scourges. And so that's the advice he goes with. So verse 12, so Jeroboam and all the people came to Reaboam the third day as the king had directed, saying, come back to me in the 3rd day. Then the king answered the people mightily or roughly and rejected the advice which the elders had given him, and he spoke to them according to the advice of the young men.

My mother, my father made you yoke. I will, make it. But I will add to your yoke, my father chasing you with whips, but I will chase you with scor scourges or scorpions. So the king did not listen to the people.

no, no, let's stop right there, verse 14. So, what do you think the ultimate lesson of this text is? So far Say it again. Yes, that's what so many of the commentaries say is, or the various devotionals.

What we learned from this text is that Reya Boam should listen to the wise elders and not listen to the young people. And you young people out there, raise your hand if you're 25 or under. OK, so all you 25 or under, when you're getting counsel, make sure you listen to the counsel of your elders. Don't just get the counsel from your buddies.

That's what this text is telling us. No, that's not what this text is telling us. Read verse 15. Verse 15 tells us exactly what this text is about.

So the king did not listen to the people, for the turn of events was from the Lord, that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord had spoken by Hijah, the Shilanite to Jeroboam, the, the son of Nabat. This is from the Lord. What is the whole point of this text? Is that God is moving the details to fulfill His word.

That the stupidity of Reaboam is accomplishing God's sovereignty. That's what we're meant to get out of this text. Is here Reaboam, he's doing his own thing. And he's falling backwards into God's plan.

that, and so we shouldn't worry when we're looking out even at our world situation and we see just nonsense like this guy in North Korea and so on and so forth. Yes, there's things that we need to prepare for and so on and so forth. But here we have, I'll, I'll tell you what's unique about the Bible. Have you ever turned on CNN or Fox News and someone says, here's what happened today and this happened by the hand of the Lord?

And here's why. No, you never see that. You ever open up the newspaper and the paper says that the King Jong-un is freaking out because the Lord is setting him up to take him out. No, it never says anything like that.

In fact, we don't have that direct divine revelation as far as I know in my theology to tell us that information. But what's interesting is the Bible is totally unique in that respect because the Bible will tell us historical goings on and then say, here's why that happened. Reaboam did this nonsense in order for God to fulfill his word. and so that's, that's just what makes the Bible so, so unique in that respect.

Look at verse 16. We gotta wrap this up. Now when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king saying, What share have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse, to your tents, O Israel.

Now see to your own house, oh David. So Israel departs their tents, but Reaboam reigned over the children of Israel who dwelt in the cities of Judah. So now you have the beginning of civil war. This has not turned out well for Jeroboam.

It's, he probably didn't think it was gonna go down this way. All of a sudden, he's got a, a big crisis on his hands, and so here's how he's gonna handle it, verse 18. Then King Reaboam sent Adaram, I love that name, Adaram. If you think you wanna send somebody out to do some damage and some business, send out a guy named Adaram.

But things did not go well with Adaram, who was in charge of, some translations say the revenue, it could be forced labor, but all Israel stoned him with their stones. He had a rocky time up there. So he shows up, he's basically trying to, to shore things up. He's, he's the muscle man for Reaboam and the muscle man gets whacked.

he died. I love the way the Bible does that, and they stone him with stones and he died. restates the obvious. Therefore, King Reaboam mounted his chariot in haste to flee to Jerusalem.

That's, he's getting out of town. My muscle man just got whacked. I'm heading back to the fort. So Israel had been in rebellion, has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.

So now we're reminded that the person who's actually writing this text is alive in the days of the divided kingdom. So we haven't, we're not in the exile according to the author. Now it came to pass, verse 20 when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had come back. They sent for him and called him to the congregation and made him king over Israel.

And there was none who followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only. We find out later, this is nice Hebrew phraseology. how like there's a lot of Jewish phraseology where they'll say, only Judah, well, except for some people from Benjamin. It's like Paul says, I didn't baptize any of y'all, except for these 2 or 3.

That's just a Jewish idiom. And so, so we do have Judah and some in Benjamin that are following Reaboam, but now the rest of the tribes are, are following Jeroboam. So the way I used to teach our high school kids or younger kids is you got Jerry in the north, Ray in the south. Jeroboam is over Israel, Reaboam in the south.

Who's over Israel? Jeroboam, Jerry, and who's in the south? Ray, Reabom. And so you've got this, the Civil war.

We'll cut to the chase with the rest of the story in, in the chapter. Reaboam says, no way. I'm not, I'm not settling for this. He gets his troops together, they're about ready to go to battle right away.

Suddenly pops in another prophet, Shamayah. They just appear out of nowhere. Shamayah says, hey, the Lord says, don't do that. This is from me.

You stay here. And surprisingly, Reaboam finally learns the lesson and it says he obeyed the word of the Lord. He pulls back from the brink of war, everybody goes home, and this is the little ray of hope that we get. Reyaboam is not gonna be a tremendously great guy, but there is coming a prophecy in about a chapter of this other guy called Josiah.

that prophecy is gonna come actually up in the north when Jeroboam is trying to set up false worship. Very interesting part of the text that we won't get to today. Although I should say, you guys should read it. You guys gotta read about what Jeroboam does in the next chapter.

You guys know what he does? He basically just creates his own little religion. Why does he do that? Cause he's afraid everybody's gonna go down south to Jerusalem to do their sacrifices.

What's Jeroboam's problem if everybody starts going down south to do their worship? Yeah, they're, then they're gonna be like, oh man, we missed Jerusalem. We can't get down the temple, we need to reunite. He doesn't want that to happen.

So he basically just makes up his own worship system and Bethel and Dan says, sets up these golden calves, creates a whole new system, just a man-made religion like every other false religion, and says, OK, here's what you guys are gonna do now. And the Lord was not happy at all. and so he sends another prophet. That says, this altar is gonna be smashed in two, and I'm bringing up another king named Josiah who's gonna take care of this false worship.

This is long before Josiah's even born. And so Jeroboam reaches out his hand to basically accuse the prophet, what happens to his hand. It gets all leprous and withers, freaks him out. That freaked me out.

And then he goes to the prophet and says, hey, please cause my hand to be restored and so on. And so there's all kinds of really crazy interesting stuff that continues to move on through 1st 1st Kings. But what, what we see bottom line here is, is man's heart as, as consistent in the Old Testament is continually turning away from the Lord, turning away from the Lord, and yet the Lord is being faithful to his covenant with David. And he's preserving a remnant who will stay faithful to worship him.

When we look at the northern tribes, things get very, very dark, very little hope at all. When we look down in the south, we see this continual remnant. And imagine all the true believers that were still in Israel at this time, that are looking at their leadership and saying, oh my goodness, what is going on? Things are totally chaotic.

God is out of control and God through these little rays of hope is reminding them, no, I've got a remnant. I'm being faithful to my servant, David. And this would have, wouldn't this have given hope to the people of Israel as they're looking at their crazy leadership? Sometimes the way we do, right?

We're looking at what's going on in the world, we're like, what is going on? And God says, hey, I'm still on the throne, look at the book of Revelation, I win. And so we, we keep pressing forward. Let's go ahead and pray.

And then I'll be up here for questions next week. I will pick it up in lesson 10, where God sends Jonah. That's gonna be a lot of fun. so this will be during the divided Kingdom period.

But let's, let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your, your kindness and goodness to us. Lord, when we see Just the, the situation of Solomon, it, it brings great fear to our hearts that we see this man who had direct divine revelation from you, who was given great knowledge and wisdom, incredible possessions. And yet he slowly turned away from you and in his old age, his love was completely in a different direction.

He did not follow you wholly, and that could happen to any one of us. We know that your word tells us to take heed, those who stand lest we fall. We need to be careful that we can't be self-deceived. Lord, we pray, Father, that You would remove from us the idols of our hearts, help us to repent.

But also help us to take hope. It can be, I know that Christians can also suffer and be tempted towards regret and hopelessness. Help us realize that your gaze is always on your people and we can always look to the cross and look to you. and because of, of your, love and shed blood, we pray, Father, that you just continue to help Cornerstone grow, purify our church, purify your church worldwide.

Help us to continually look to you regardless of historical circumstances, knowing that you are the God of history. We pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.