Guest User 3/14/21 Guest User 3/14/21

The Convenience of Idolatry

My name is Jeff. I’m so excited to be back here in the Valley. We were here for 11 years. Then we were in California for the last 4 1/2 years and then we’ve now just returned three weeks ago. I’m so glad to be here.

I really love this series that you’ve been in.

Series: A Kingdom Divided
March 14, 2021 - Jeff Gokee

I really love this series that you’ve been in. If you haven’t listened to David, your pastor, his last three sermons, I can’t encourage you enough. I did listen to them. Powerful. So powerful. They’re going to give you an overview of Kings. First and Second Kings was actually one book that they cut in half because they were like, “I don’t know if people can get through the whole thing.” So the divided it into one narrative. And that narrative is really, really important, because it’s really about small amounts of success and massive amounts of failure.

That’s why, a lot of times as we look at the Old Testament, it’s kind of like, “Oh, let’s get to the New Testament, the good stuff.” No, no, no. We’ve got to learn about the failure part. There is success int here, of course, but the failure part helps us understand all the good stuff. It helps us understand why we need Jesus.

I’ve got three kids. One of them is a GCU student, whoo! So, as a father, I’m constantly telling my kids where I’ve made mistakes. The reason I do that is “Don’t do what I did. Don’t repeat those same mistakes.”

The Old Testament is like, “Listen, let me tell you why we need Jesus. Look at all the failure.” And it’s really important as we go through this, that you kind of sit in that a bit. Sit in how you’ve made mistakes. Sit in how you’ve failed. Allow yourself to receive the redemption that Jesus Christ gave to you, the grace you’ve received that you did not earn.

This is why the Old Testament is so helpful for us. It’s helping us bring into the New Testament where Jesus was the fulfillment of it all. You can’t separate these two. This isn’t old and new. This is wholistic way of telling the gospel narrative. It comes in its final moments in Jesus’ death and resurrection and his kingdom come and his will be done in earth as it is in heaven. That’s why it’s so important and that’s why I love this church, that we’re actually diving into the failures of the past to help us see where we need to go, and why we really need Jesus. So, I hope you face yourself today.

Much of what I’ve been doing in this last year has been facing myself, dealing with myself. A year and a half ago, I’ve been going to a counselor for the last three and a half years; and he asked me this question, “How do you care for yourself? How do you self care?” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means.” And he said, “When’s the last time you went to a doctor.” And I was like, “I don’t know. Like ten years ago.” And he was like, “Yeah, maybe we’ll start there. Maybe go to the doctor. You’re forty-three, so it’s probably time to do that.”

So I walked into the doctor being that guy—you know, the guy who hasn’t been to the doctor in ten years. And they’re like, “Hey, that guy.” So I sit with the doctor and she has me go and do some blood work and she calls me back and says, “Hey, I need you to come back in. We saw some stuff.” So I sit back down with her and she says, “We need to send you to a hematologist.”

Now our family knows blood pretty well in this way. Our son was diagnosed with leukemia when he was eight (so nine years ago). So she sends us to a hematologist for me to sit through. We knew what that meant. So the hematologist says to us, “You have cancer.” Okay. “So, what happens. What’s going on?”

He asked me this question, “How do you feel anxious? How does that come out in your life?”

And I was like, “I don’t even know what you mean.”

And he said, “No, like, how often are you anxious?

And I’m like, “I never feel anxious. I’m that annoying guy that wakes up in the morning at 5:30 going, ‘This is the greatest day ever!’”

Right? I’m like lollipops and sugarplums. I’m like, “I’m so happy to be alive every single day.”

And he said this, “You have been anxious for a very, very, very long time. And this cancer is activated by anxiety.”

What I didn’t realize was I had a place of worship, a high place of worship, a different reality than the throne where God is supposed to sit. I created my own. It was wrapped around insecurity, power, position. I’m a 3 on the Enneagram. I want to get stuff done. And when I get stuff done, I feel successful. I want influence. I didn’t realize that over a period of time it actually triggered something genetically, biologically in me that caused cancer. It’s as if God was saying to me, “I want that place back. You keep filling it with all this other stuff, the approval of man, power, and that’s your reward. That’s all you get. But I want you. I’m a jealous God. I want all of you.”

This last year for me has been about repentance. And I resonate with Paul when he says, “I’m the chief of all sinners.” I stand before you today not as somebody who has it all figured out. I am broken and I am beautiful. Because the King of kings and the Lord of lords has rescued my life and he’s rescued your life.

That’s why it’s so important that we look at both the successes of the past and the failures of what we move forward. And because we look at King David, we go, “Wow, a man after God’s own heart.” Yeah, an adulterer and a murderer. Right?

And we move to Solomon. “Wow. Wisest man who’s ever existed.” Oh, a thousand wives. Idolatrous. He starts to divide the kingdom.

His son Rehoboam takes over for him and decides he wants to prove to Daddy that he’s a somebody. So he starts taxing the people so hard and grinding them down, that God as a result of the failures of Solomon goes to this man Jeroboam and says to Jeroboam, “Jeroboam, I’m going to bless you. You’re going to take these ten tribes. I’m going to bless you. Because of the failures of what’s happening with Solomon and Rehoboam.”

And listen to this in 1 Kings 11:38-39:

38 If you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands, as David my servant did, I will be with you.

By the way, that’s the win. “I will be with you. My presence will be with you. My power will be with you. My influence will be with you.”

I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel to you. 39 I will humble David’s descendants because of this, but not forever.’”

Here’s what I want to say. How gracious is God? He just lays it all out. Look what God is doing. God is not a cruel God who doesn’t set expectation for us. He goes to Jeroboam, “I want to bless you. I want you to take these ten tribes and I want you to lead them well by the power of God to be a light unto the nations for the world to see that there is a king who is on the throne. And I want to do that through you. But you need to be obedient. You need to follow after my laws. You need to obey in the same way that David did, repent in the same way that David did.”

He’s not cruel. He doesn’t make us guess. As followers of God, he’s not making us guess. He’s making it clear: with obedience and righteousness comes blessing. When we choose to do something different, there is a responsibility to that. He releases us. It’s terrifying. In Romans 1, he releases us to our desires. You want to go do that? Go do that.

What we find in Jeroboam is a significant problem. God has made everything clear. And maybe you find this in yourself. I would imagine you would. But what happens in Jeroboam is an individualism steps in. God has given the promise. God has made clear what he will do and how he will bless. But Jeroboam all of a sudden gets this individualistic urge in him that so many of us have and I want to go after this morning.

I did a lot of research on individualism. And honestly, the best thing I found was the Webster’s Dictionary definition and it is says this, “Individualism is a doctrine that the interests of the individual are or ought to be ethically paramount.”

It’s a doctrine. It’s a doctrine that the interests of me, what I want, what I desire are ethically paramount to anything else God included.

I was driving down the 10 there around University of Phoenix. If you go to the east Valley, you hate that turn, because it’s jam-packed So I’m on this turn this week, which I thought was kind of interesting. I’m on this turn and there’s a billboard for Gila River, and it said this: “Reclaim what’s yours. You do you.”

I was like, “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You do you?” Eh? You love money and want to be greedy? You do you. You like to sleep around? You do you. If you want to get ripped every weekend because you think it’s fun, you do you. You like to have affairs? You do you. Right? You don’t like your church? Don’t go! You do you.

This is the cancer that’s killing our culture. What’s more terrifying is it’s made its way into the church. It’s made its way into believers who profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, their King of kings and their Lord of lords. And where the angels lay down and say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come,” and we’re like, “Yeah but that’s kind of inconvenient for me. That doesn’t really fit in my box right now. I just don’t have time for it.”

This is what happens to Jeroboam. All that God has promised him, all that God has laid out to him, all the blessing, Jeroboam is, “But I’ve got a plan. I’ve got a different thing.” And what he does is he creates his own religion of individualism. And I wonder if many of us have done the same thing. In 1 Kings 12:26, I want you to listen to all the personal pronouns here. It’s really important.

26 Jeroboam thought to himself, “The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David.

So now he’s moved these ten tribes and he’s starting to think to himself. It’s a dangerous thing to go, “What about me?”

27 If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.”

It starts to create this insecurity. “Oh my gosh, what about me? Oh my gosh, what if they leave?”

28 After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves.

This should transport you back to the exodus. This should transport you back to the mountain where Moses is up getting the Ten Commandments, and because the people are impatient, Aaron creates these calves. This should transport you back to that.

He said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

How wrong.

29 One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan. 30 And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other. 31 Jeroboam built shrines on high places and appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites. 32 He instituted a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the festival held in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. This he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves he had made. And at Bethel he also installed priests at the high places he had made. 33 On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a month of his own choosing, he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built at Bethel. So he instituted the festival for the Israelites and went up to the altar to make offerings.

Where is God? He, he, he, me, my. This is the way that Jeroboam is deciding to lead the people of Israel, the people of God rescued out of Egypt for His names’ sake to be a light unto the nations. And what does Jeroboam do? He does what so many of us do. “Well, what about me? Me, me, me, me, my.”

This is a complete and utter rejection of all that God had promised, that all that God has promised us. As I was thinking of it, there are many things that individualism fuel, but in the context of this passage, there are two things that I think are core, that stand out in this passage.

I think number one is fear. Fear. Listen to that first part of that narrative. He’s like, “Oh my gosh. They’re going to go to Jerusalem.” By the way, the place they’re supposed to go to honor God—the system that had been established by God Almighty, carried out from generation to generation, he’s like, “Oh, I don’t want them to go there. Because they might follow that king.”

No, no, no. If they go to Jerusalem, they’ll try to follow God, not a king. “No, no, no. I can’t do that. The might dethrone me. They actually might kill me.” Jeroboam was more worried about the people not following him than following God. I think that’s true so often in our lives. But here’s what I’ve been wrestling with this week. That fear is always in conflict with faith. Always. Fear is always in conflict with faith.

What we fear we follow. I wonder what you follow. Because is about the things unseen, Hebrews tells us. It’s this mysterious moment when we stand on the edge of the boat of whatever situation we find in our lives, and God’s like, “Just trust me. I know physics says this is impossible. I know science says this is not possible. Trust me.”

And this is the movement of faith. We step into the water. But fear says, “You could drown. You could die.” I think in our culture, what I find so interesting that fear is doing, is we are so afraid, we are so fearful that we might offend people, that we are willing to offend God. We’re so worried, “Well, what if we offend somebody.” I’ll just make it easy for you. You will. You’re going to offend people if you follow Jesus.

But so many of us are like, “I can’t live that way. I can’t say that thing. I can’t really, truly abide by all the scripture is saying. I mean, bits and pieces of course. But not all of it, because, if do that, I’ll offend people.” And in that process I’m willing to offend God but I’m not willing to offend others. That is another altar at a high place.

That is the opposite of what God is inviting you into. Because fear is where false gods come from. It’s a false god in your life that you’ve maybe created, because instead of being guided by the Spirit of God who inspired the scriptures of God, we are led by the hand of a fearful culture that we were called to do a transformation over. Right? This is heavy stuff. But we have to face ourselves. We have to deal with ourselves.

This is why Isaiah 53:6 says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned” – what? “To our own way.”

What I want to propose to you is this: Fear God and fear not. Fear God and fear not. Do you know this is a beautiful thing in scripture. This fear not thing is a gift that God gives to us. In fact, he gave it to us in the scriptures 365 times. Do you know why? Because he wants you to wake up every single morning reminding yourself that you were bought with a price. You are a precious son and daughter of the most high God. You carry the commission in your bloodstream, made to go help people come to see Jesus. Fear God and fear not in this world.

We are unstoppable in this world when we live this way. But when we become just like everybody else, because fear has emasculated the gospel, we miss out on the mission and the joy of what it is to join Jesus, his hands and feet in this world reaching. So fear not. Fear God and fear not.

I want this image in your head. Psalm 23. Say this with me. There are enemies all around us. And what are we doing? We’re at a table with the Good Shepherd. You can hear all the voices. “Don’t do that.” “You can’t do this.” “Go this way.” “Do you know that you could get this?” “If you don’t have this…” “If you don’t vote for this…” They’re all around you. You can hear all the voices. And it’s just you and God laughing hysterically and enjoying a meal. Because he makes a banquet table in the midst of our enemies, because he’s a good God, he’s a Good Shepherd and he’s leading his people into the Promised Land. Not just for ourselves, but for the sake of others. But if we’re so fearful, we’re going to miss out on the calling that he gave to us, which is to have life and life to the fullest.

The second thing that I see that individualism breeds, and what we see with Jeroboam, is convenience. He goes, “Don’t go all the way to Jerusalem.” Like it’s so far away. “Let me make it easy for you. Let me make it easy for you.”

You know what I have found that historically the easier things have become, the farther we have moved away from God; because we can get whatever what we want just like that. I can go on an app and I can order whatever I want whenever I want how I want it when I want it. And so I just went like this, “I bet God works the same way. I bet I can do that with my Christian faith. Just make it convenient. Because it is all about me.” And what we’ve done in the process is replaced our theology for me-ology, and made it all about us instead of all about God. Our lives, as Christians, are not about convenience. It’s about crucifixion. “I am crucified with Christ,” Paul says, “Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. He’s literally doing the opposite of what Jeroboam did, where it’s like, “I did this. I made it. I happen.” Paul’s going, “I need to die to all that.” And dying is inconvenient.

Ryan brought this up and it triggered in my brain, I realize I really struggle with Good Friday. I’m trying to get past Good Friday as fast as I can to get to Easter Sunday. Because that’s where the party is. He is risen! Everything’s great now, right? But at Good Friday, I get to deal with what I did to Jesus, how I’ve betrayed God. And I don’t want to deal with. Are you with me? I don’t want to deal with my sin, my depravity. I want all the good stuff. I want convenience, happiness, all the good stuff. I don’t want to deal with the fact that my sin put him there. I don’t want to deal with that. So get past Good Friday and go to Easter. That’s easier, more convenient.

And I struggle with that. Maybe you do too. Because convenience will always be in conflict with the cross. Always. And it’s what we’re being invited, not only to die to ourselves, but also commissioned to help other people do the same thing. It crushes our evangelism. It crushes our calling in this life.

So what’s the answer? Matthew 6:33 says this. This is something I write in my journal every single morning because I have to because I might forget. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” Make it all about Jesus. Make it all about his kingdom. Make it all about his power, his joy, his peace, his love.

Then what happens in that mistrial exchange? Everything we’ve been longing for, hoping for, desiring for comes to fruition. But it comes to fruition in the person of Jesus, not in what I want, how I want it, when I get it.

This is where Jeroboam fails. It says in 1 Kings 14:9, because he led the people astray:

9 You have done more evil than all who lived before you. You have made for yourself other gods, idols made of metal; you have aroused my anger and turned your back on me.

May we not do that, church. Because of our individualism, because of the fear that we feel so deep in our soul that Satan keeps sparking day after day, because of the convenience that we desire that’s become a part of our ethos, the way we think, the way we act.

Jeroboam’s legacy, as we talk about it thousands of years later, is that he led a people astray. He had an opportunity to call them to be who God wanted them to be, and instead he created a counter-gospel. He will be ever known as the man who led Israel away into conflict, not blessing, but curse. That’s what happens when we release God’s will and we take up our own.

But here’s the beautiful thing that scripture always does. Scripture is always about redemption. And where Jeroboam failed, come on let’s preach, where Jeroboam failed, Jesus succeeded. Where our sin kept us in the grave, Jesus resurrected from the grave. Our eternity is heaven because Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, loved us enough to lay down his life to come to us. Emmanuel, God with us, gave his life so that we could be set free, which has now commissioned us to be the people of God for the glory of God. This is what we’re being invited into. This is how beautiful, where mankind fails, Jesus wins. We are the people of Jesus, called to live this out in our lives.

I know it’s not easy. I want you to know, I know your pastoral staff here, it is so weighty to be up here. I have to deal with me first. Sometimes a bunch of people think, just because I get up here and speak, that I’ve got this all figured out. And I don’t. I don’t. I’m struggling so deeply to find the grace and mercy that covers a multitude of sins. It’s not easy. I don’t have it all figured out. But I am obediently, to the best of my ability, following after Jesus. And when I fail, I repent.

I would invite you into the same thing, invite you to the same journey that I’m trying to do as a believer in Jesus Christ, to the best of my ability. It’s not easy. And what David’s been talking about the last few weeks—not easy. But so important because this is a turning point for the local church, in my opinion. This is an opportunity for us to regain what it means to be a city on a hill for the world to see that he is the King. He is the King. All the power, all the glory, all the honor belongs to him. But we get to display that and live that in our lives daily.

I told you about my son nine years ago. He was diagnosed with leukemia as an eight year old. Walk into the hospital, and their marketing department must have done a whole rebrand. We walk in and the first thing is “It’s all about you.” That seems appropriate, right? You have a little kid that’s going through cancer. Like, “It’s all about you, buddy. It’s all about you.”

There’s nothing that could be more toxic to an eight-year-old heart, or to your heart or to my heart than to hear, “It’s all about you.” So we feel like we did everything we possibly could do. “Buddy, it’s not about you. It’s not about you.”

It’s not about you. I know it’s painful. I know it’s hard. It’s not about you. It’s about Jesus and entering into his suffering, in selflessly suffering to serve other people. Do what you’re going to do. It’s difficult. It’s not convenient. And it takes a whole lot of faith to go through. It was so painful. But we were doing everything we could to help him not believe it was all about him.

The thousands of children that have come before my son who have died so that he could have life, so he could have the protocol, the treatment, the chemo. Thousands of kids had to die. How dangerous for me to tell my son, “It’s all about you.” How dangerous for you, the carriers of the cross, the good news of Jesus Christ, for you to believe that it’s all about you, that life is all about you, your hopes and your dreams. It is all about Jesus. It will always be about Jesus. That will liberate you. It’s going to liberate you. It’s going to liberate you to live like Jesus.

As I sat in my home hospital room three weeks after getting a diagnosis of cancer, the doctor said, “I don’t use words like this. But you’re healed. It’s gone. As doctors we don’t have a lot of words for this.”

“I do. It’s a miracle.” Because he’s rescued my life. He’s trying to get my attention. “I want that altar. That’s my rightful place. You keep putting other people’s opinions and your lack of identity in that. I want you and I want all of you.”

He wants all of you. He wants all of you. He loves you so much. So I want to slow down and I want to invite you into something, something Joshua did before he dies. He was a father, he fathered these people. And he says this to them. And I want you to slow down. I know I’ve been ramping up. I want you to slow down and I want you to hear these words from Joshua, but I want you to hear them from theLord. I want you to trust the Spirit of God in your life right now that he is speaking to you.

Joshua 24:14-15 (ESV):

14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord

Put away social media, the fear of social media. Put away the fear of whatever the news is trying to tell you. Whatever political system is trying to tell you. Put away those fathers that you serve beyond the rivers and in Egypt.

15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites…

…or the gods of Hollywood, the gods of power and wealth in the institutions all across this world that tell you you need to achieve more, you’ve got to do more, you’ve got to be more…

…in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

We will serve the Lord. Choose today who you will serve. You can’t serve both. No man can serve two masters. Today is a day where we receive the gift and the grace that Jesus has given to us through his death and his resurrection. We say amen. We choose today to live in light of that. Don’t abuse it. Choose to live in light of the fact that he paid the price, the ultimate price, for you to be alive. He knit you together in your mother’s womb, not so you could have a good life, but so that you could have a God life. So that you could be his hands and his feet in this world, sharing this good news that will transform people’s lives. When people’s lives transform, cities transforms. And when cities transform, states transform. And when states transform, countries transform. And when countries transform, the world transforms. Right?

Because this is the work that Jesus has been doing, that God has been doing from the beginning of time and he’s inviting you into today. Choose today whom you will serve. But as for this church and the leadership here, we’re going to serve the Lord. May he invite you into that. May you be convicted by the Spirit of God, who today will you serve? Will you serve all the other gods? Or will you serve the King of kings and the Lord of lords for his glory and his honor, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And God’s church said, Amen.

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David Stockton 3/7/21 David Stockton 3/7/21

A Divided Heart

Series: A Kingdom Divided
March 7, 2021 - David Stockton

Good morning. It’s very, very, very encouraging to see people here after the last two weeks of messages. Uneasy laughter. It makes sense. It’s been a bit dicey the last couple of weeks. We’ve been going through First Kings. We’re getting a heavy dose of something. And I really am thankful that people are coming to hear God’s word. I’m thankful for the people who are encouraging me. Because you know that I’m just kind of trying to do my best. I’m not perfect in any way and don’t have all this stuff figured out. But I’m trying to really dissect what our cultural moment is describing to us as a vision for God’s righteousness; and trying to get into the biblical narrative and find out what is really a vision for God’s righteousness—against what is popular in our culture, and maybe what is against what’s going on in our own souls and minds.

I don’t claim to be good at it or perfect at it in any way. But I’m doing my best. And thankfully, we have the word of God. I have some people that I’m able to process with. I really do feel like the messages that I’ve been preaching really do represent our elder team and our leadership team here, our staff, all of those things. So I feel good about all of that. But I also know that words can go different ways and they can hit people in different ways. So I’m also thankful for all the people who have been engaging in some dialogue with me through email, saying, “I heard you say this. I want to unpack that a little bit and make sure I’m hearing what you’re saying.”

I know there are people who are deciding whether they really want to stick with Living Streams or not. Because we’re really kind of drawing some lines that are not super popular in society today. So some people are deciding to move on. And I don’t blame them, you know, if that’s what they feel; because we’re not going to adjust or budge or try and let the culture dictate what we preach or what the word of God says. We’re going to let the word of God interpret our culture for us. It’s interesting. I do feel a lot of encouragement. The most encouragement I feel is when someone is actually willing to dialogue. So if you’re thinking about leaving or thinking about saying, “I can’t be here anymore,” I totally understand. But I would like to be able to have a conversation before you go, just to make sure we are dividing over what we are actually dividing over, and not just that you heard something strange or weird that I was saying. Because I know I can mess up too.

That being said, thanks for being here. Hopefully we’ll see you next week. We’re still in First Kings. We’re going to be going through First Kings again, we’ve been looking at this super, super ancient, near-eastern document that’s been preserved for all this time. It’s very old. It’s very outdated. It’s a very different cultur. All of these things. And yet, we think it’s the inspired word of God and has a lot to say to us, because people really aren’t that different from the way they’ve always been. We have the same problems and challenges.

We’ve seen lots of connections from First Kings. There are uneasy transfers of power, which is something we’ve experienced in America. There are debates and divisions over taxes. Again, America. There’s lots of division over political issues. They’re building a wall, which is fun. And it’s a time in Israel’s history where there is tons of prosperity. Prominence, prosperity, world power, all of that is going on. And that’s what we’re experiencing.

At the same time this is going on, the writer, who most likely is Jeremiah, is recording for us a lot of the idolatry that was taking place in the midst of the prosperity. So I think we’re experiencing right now in America, that all of our prosperity has led us to some forms of idolatry in our nation, that displeases God.

So this prophet was writing to his people in his day to try to warn them to not fall into these traps. I’m using this book and we’re trying to warn ourselves from the same traps, so we don’t fall into some of those things. There was a continuous redefining God and what worship is to be. We’ve described that in our context, we have a cross up here. In their day, they had the worship of Yahweh, the God that brought them out of Egypt and made them into a nation, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and on and on. So they would worship Yahweh.

But over time they decided that they didn’t just want to worship Yahweh. All the other nations around them had other gods, as well. So they decided, “Maybe if we worship Yahweh and the other gods, we’ll get like double, triple love. We’ll get triple the blessings. We’ll get it all.” So they began to bring in things like Baal worship. They began to bring in things like Asherah poles. They never took down the cross, so to speak. They just started adding other things to their worship.

What they didn’t realize is that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is a very jealous God. Not in the petty, junior high type jealousy. But in the idea of a woman who’s married to a man and all of a sudden he decides he wants to bring in other women to the relationship. The jealousy that she would feel for her husband would be righteous and right. Saying, “This is not right.” And God himself is the source of that righteous jealousy. God says, “No. I’m not going to stand here and let you add other gods to the worship of Me. You get Me or you get nothing.”

That’s ultimately what happened in Israel’s history. Jeremiah, as he was prophesying, he was called The Weeping Prophet because people kept going, “Eh, you’re annoying.” He kept prophesying and they were like, “Hey, throw him in prison.” He kept prophesy and they’d say, “Hey, put him in a pit. That way we can’t hear him anymore. Just leave him in a pit for a while.”

He was the weeping prophet because he was prophesying as he watched this unfold before his eyes, as people continued to practice idolatry and, ultimately the nation of Israel was completely destroyed, in just a few hundred years.

America, where are you? America, are you willing to listen? We’re coming up on a few hundred years. And where are we going to be?

I don’t know how to change America. I can pray for it, we can reach out, we can do all of those things. But what we really want to do is make sure none of those things show up inside our church, inside our fellowship and our family. So we’re going to preach about it.

Tim Keller wrote a book called Counterfeit Gods, as he was trying to help the church in America understand culturally what the idolatry of today is. Some of the things that he said is:

An idol is something we cannot live without. We must have it, therefore it drives us to break rules we once honored to harm others, even ourselves, in order to get it…

So it’s basically these things we used to hold as true and right, we now want these other things and these things are standing in our way, so we just kind of put those to the side. Maybe something like this right here (bible). It’s happening today. Sorry if that freaked you out super bad. Just trying to make a point. But it came out a little bit abrupt.

…An idol is anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give, anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.

The first thing that came to my mind was the song “Driver’s License.” Sorry. If you don’t know what that is, good. You’re good.

…If I have that, then I will feel like my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, and I’ll feel significant and secure.

The “that,” which he is referring to are the idols in our lives. Some people that I’ve been asking recently, “What are you seeing as the idols of our day,”:

“Comfort, convenience, safety and security.” Tyler Johnson, who’s a pastor here in Phoenix. He says, “Those are the idols of our day.”
Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, talks bout “Money, sex and power,” being the idols of our day.
Dan Riccio says, “Self,” (uh-oh, that one gets to the point), “Self is an idol in our day. Sex, money, power, acclaim, security,” are the idols of our day. We want those things even more than we want God.We’re willing to compromise even what God has asked of us in order to get those things.

Then one of the things that I feel has been important for me to bring out, and this is just me, I only came up with one, those other guys had a bunch of items, but our desires. I think that’s the idolatry of America today. But I think that’s the idolatry that’s sneaking into our churches. Somehow we’re allowing our desires to dictate what is right and wrong.

You hear it in society. “You do you.” You know, whatever you want, that’s what you should be, that’s who you should be. But our desires do not belong on the throne of our lives. That’s one of the reasons why we keep this cross up here. Yes, to remind us of what Jesus did for us, the sacrifice that he paid so that we never have to fear God ever again. We never have to fear death ever again. But also as a reminder to us that ninety-nine, (I’ve been saying ninety, I’m going up to ninety-nine now)—ninety-nine percent of following Jesus is denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him. Denying ourselves means: Do not give in to disordered desires. We are constantly battling between what is a desire that is within us that is of God, and what is a desire within us that is not of God. And we deny the ones that are disordered. And we live into the ones that are not. This is very hard stuff. It’s very hard stuff. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying, “Oh, just go do it.” It’s very hard stuff. And that’s why he was a weeping prophet.

So 1 Kings 11. Let’s jump in here:

11 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.
Idolatry. He called it love.
3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
7 On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.

Wow. We’re in a different place here. Last week we were reading 1 Kings 3, where Solomon prays this beautiful prayer. God is asking Solomon, “I’ll give you anything. What do you want?” And instead of asking for all the idolatry-type things, Solomon says, “God, can you give me a heart that listens to you? I don’t want to even have a heart that knows the truth, so to speak, because then I might put myself on the throne and decide what is true and right.” He said, “Could you just give me a heart that listens to you, that can hear you? Because you’re the only one that sees clearly. You’re the only one that should be on the throne.”

Hallelujah! It’s a beautiful, beautiful prayer. We should be praying it every day because we live in a crazy world.

And then we get to see the display of that, where Solomon was able to bring absolute justice, beautiful, righteous justice into a very troubling, street-level justice issue between two prostitutes and one baby. And it was just awesome. And everyone who got to see it was so refreshed that justice and truth could happen in our day. And it was just awesome.

Then, that’s chapter 3. Chapter 3 through 10 you just get to see that Solomon’s bringing out the wisdom. He’s executing justice. He’s ordering Israel in such a way that is causing the most flourishing and freedom for everybody there. The nations around them, instead of warring with them, they send delegations to sit at the feet of Solomon, just to listen to what he might have to say, so that they could experience a little bit of the freedom and flourishing that came through the Judeo ethic.

Solomon builds the temple for the Lord. Solomon builds a palace for himself. Solomon built a wall around Jerusalem. And it starts to describe all of the grain that was brought to Solomon every day because of all the fruitfulness of all the fields. Then it describes all of the flour that was brought in for his table as they made all the food for all the people. Then he talks bout all the gold that was brought in as tribute from other nations, and the wealth and the prominence and the prosperity. It was amazing. Actually, the title of the last chunk of scripture in chapter 10 is “Solomon’s Splendor.” It’s beautiful what the Lord had done, and what Solomon and the people of Israel were experiencing.

And then the weeping prophet, who’s recording for us a little bit of what happened, he says, “However, Solomon loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter.” There was a disordered desire within Solomon that was not in line with decrees and statutes and commands of God. And Solomon went for it.

Maybe he thought: I’m doing everything else the Lord is asking me to do. What’s the problem with this one little one? He wasn’t willing to deal with the “little foxes” like we talked about two weeks ago.

And I don’t think that when Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter, the first one, I don’t think he thought, All right. One down and 999 to go. I don’t think that was the vision that he had. I don’t think he thought, I’ll marry Pharaoh’s daughter and then I’ll marry a whole bunch of others. Just like those who get married don’t come to the altar and profess their vows to each other thinking, Maybe. Even though half of them, so to speak, end in divorce. I don’t think half of them are going, Yeah, we’ll see how this goes.

But little foxes come in and then other little foxes, other little foxes. So Solomon basically made one decision of compromise, sexually. And it led to another and another and another and another and another and another and another. Because sin is never satisfied. Sex is never satisfied. And many of us sitting in this room or listening online can think about the one time we made a compromise and how many more compromises it led to, until, ultimately, you’re in bondage.

Solomon, the wisest person of all—he fell in this way. And he ended up with a thousand wives. Well, seven hundred of royal birth wives, and then three hundred concubines, which are basically illegitimate wives. Because he decided to go for one.

Not only that, but then he decided to keep those wives happy. He started building high places of worship. He built the temple for Yahweh and then he started building temples for all the other gods. Just in case you don’t quite understand historically what it means to build a high place of worship for another god, the gods that were described in here—basically what was happening was Solomon built the correct form of Yahweh and a temple for that. Then he built these other temples.

These other temples, a lot of them had to do with fertility, these gods. It was an agrerian society. So if you wanted your lands to be fertile, if you wanted your family to be fertile, your wives to be fertile, then you would pray to these gods and they would cause your lands to be fertile, which was a really important deal when you’re trying to grow stuff. And your wives to be fertile was really important if you want to survive—have people to work the fields, maybe.

So a lot of these gods had this kind of concept. “If you worship me then you will be prosperous. You’ll be fertile.” But what they required as worship was for you to give up your sexuality, to give up your virginity. Practicing worship for these gods, had oftentimes going and linking yourself with a temple prostitute of some sort. Or giving up your virginity to one of these priests or priestesses. And if you offer that sacrifice, then this god will bless you with fertility. Sex became rampant.

Then, sad to say, others of these gods were gods that actually required human sacrifice. One tradition talks about the god Molek described here as this statue of iron that had a head of an ox of some sort. He would have his arms out and then inside the belly was this hollowed out thing where they would build a fire. That fire would warm up the iron and warm up the hands until it was red hot. Then they would come and lay their babies on his hands and watch their babies burn up as a sacrifice so that they could be fertile.

This is what Solomon produced in Israel. And Israel never recovered until it was destroyed. And if we don’t think we have a sex problem in America, if we don’t think we’ve created an idol out of sex and the compromise and the giving of ourselves in all these different sexual ways, we’re so blind. And, sad to say, what Solomon probably didn’t even know until he saw it was the sexual kind of reality of all this idolatry ultimately led to the killing of babies. If we don’t think we have that problem in our society, we’re blind as well. Our lust, our giving over to sexual desires that are disordered and outside the context of scriptures, has not led to a little, it’s led to a lot of damage for our society. Sad to say, it’s led to a lot of damage for a generation of unborn.

And we get to see it in Solomon’s day and you get to hear the weeping prophet Jeremiah say, “Please wake up.” We get to read the scriptures and there’s so much detail about sex in the Bible. And whenever sex is done outside the context of one man and one woman, it does not lead to anything good. It leads to destruction. And most often it’s not even the destruction of the person, it’s the destruction of the people that come after them.

The scariest thing about sin is you get to choose your sin, but you don’t get to choose the consequence. And even scarier than that is you don’t get to choose who gets the consequence. Most often it’s the ones that go after you. It’s the ones who you love the most that suffer. That’s true in Solomon’s day, as well.

Now you see why I’m thankful that people keep showing up. I’m just saying things and…yeah.

This is our reality. This is us. We read about Solomon and you’re like, “Yeah, that’s me, except for all the rich and smart stuff.” The way Paul describes it in the New Testament, is he actually describes a war going on inside of us. He uses the word war when he describes the battle between our spirit and our flesh. Our ordered desires and our disordered desires. It’s a war. It’s a challenge. It’s a difficulty. It’s something that causes pain and frustration and agony and sleepless nights and prayers and groanings within us.

If we’re honest, we all know that war. We have a nature inside of us that was given to us from Adam that wants to go against the things of God. And those of us who have given our life to Christ, we now have the Spirit inside of us who is compelling us to go toward the things of Christ. But it’s a war. It’s a battle.

Just the other day I was with a family, and one of their daughters who is young, it was so funny because she wanted to say something that was going to be like gossipy. She wanted to say something about what everyone was saying about this person; and the mom was like, “No.” And she was like, “Well, let me just…” “No!” “But, what…” “No!” It was just like, what is happening here? She could not keep it in. It was like she needed to say this juicy morsel of gossip so bad. And her mom was just cutting it off. And I was like, This is so interesting. Then it was funny because she finally stopped and the mom was like, “As soon as we go inside later she’s going to still say it.” Like she can’t help it. It’s the way it is within us. It’s alive in us. It was alive in Solomon.

That is truth. All that we’ve been saying these last few weeks, this is the truth we need to hear. God is setting before us a blessing and a curse. If you walk in this way you will be free. You will flourish in the things of God, and you will be setting up your children and the generations to come for prosperity and goodness in the Lord.

This is true. We have to hear this. We have to know this. But, thanks be to God that there’s more to the story to who our God is. He’s full of truth and he’s full of grace. And as I was reading, I stumbled across something that I want us all to hear. It’s so important. I’m so excited about this.

9 The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. 10 Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. 11 So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. 12 Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him, but will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”

So God visited Solomon again, finding him in all of this idolatry, going from a discerning heart to a divided heart, leading his people into all of this disgusting, detestable idolatry, paving the way for pain and agony for his children and the children of Israel. And God comes to him because he hates sin and what it does. He says, “Solomon, I’m going to have to punish you and I’m going to tear the kingdom away from you. Nevertheless, I’m not going to do it in your lifetime, for the sake of David. But I’m going to tear it from your son. Yet, I’m not going to tear it all from him, for the sake of David.”

If God was just all about truth, Solomon would be over. And to be honest, humanity would be over already, as well. But the God of the Bible is very peculiar. The God of the Bible is very scandalous, because there’s this razor’s edge to his character that’s described in Exodus 34. He is for sure not going to leave the guilty unpunished. But he is also abounding in mercy and kindness and faithfulness. And he loves to forgive.

In this chapter we get to see the nature of God. He’s disgusted and heartbroken over the idolatry and what it’s going to produce and what it’s going to cost—not just for Solomon, but for his children. And that stuff does play out. There are consequences to sin every single time. There is pleasure in sin for a season, but then it’s destruction. And sad to say, it’s not just destruction for you. It’s also for the ones you love. But, at the same time, God always is full of grace and mercy.

Here it is in the Old Testament. We see a little bit of a picture of a New Testament principle. When God says, “For the sake of David, Solomon you’re going to escape punishment. For the sake of David, Solomon, the promise that I made that David will always have someone sit on the throne will remain intact. And, sure enough, that promise did remain intact all the way until there was one born of the seed of David, or the line of David. His name was Jesus. He’s become King that reigns forevermore.

What the New Testament picks up right there is kind of bouncing off this. For the sake of David, Solomon escaped punishment and received the promise. And for the sake of Jesus Christ, everyone who believes in him escapes punishment and receives the full promise of God. This is the way Paul says it in Romans 5:

18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man…

Now, Paul’s talking about Adam, but you could also talk about Solomon—or you could put your own name in there.

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. 20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Message translation (MSG) says it this way:

18-19 Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, …

That’s you and me and Adam and Solomon.

…another person did it right and got us out of it….

That’s Jesus.

…But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

For the sake of David, Solomon escaped punishment and the promise stayed intact. And for the sake of Jesus, you and I, who have the same heart as Solomon, you and I who have stories of divorce, you and I who have stories of sexual immorality, you and I who have story after story of compromise, of little foxes, you and I that can think of all the times we blew it, which led to all the times we blew it, you and I who have no right to escape the punishment for our sins, and you and I who have no right to the full promise of God, which is that we are co-heirs with Christ of everything.

The promise of God is that you and I get everything that God wants to give Jesus. You and I get to experience the full realization of the promise of God, which comes in “kingdom come.” You and I get to know the resurrection life that Jesus brought into our world. And you and I also get to know the redemption that God can do, where he even takes our most heinous and disgusting sins and produces something good through them.

This is the scandal. The more you sin, the more God’s grace comes to you. The more you sin, the more God’s forgiveness is for you. In fact, God, in some ways Paul is saying, go ahead and try him if you want. Go ahead and test it if you want. You cannot outdo God’s love, grace and forgiveness. Even the sins you haven’t committed yet God has already provided grace and forgiveness for that. Your unrighteousness, no matter how hard you try, or no matter how badly you fail because you’re trying to do right, will never be more powerful than the righteousness and forgiveness and grace of God.

The very next thing Paul is saying after this is: Should we sin that grace may abound? God forbid! But he has to say that because, basically, he was saying the more you sin the more grace will abound. But he said don’t go that way because you also need to understand that your righteousness can produce life just like your wickedness can produce death. So be about the righteousness.

But when you fall and when you fail, and all of us sitting in this room or sitting at home, we are right now before God sinners. We are right now before God facing the wrath that he has against sin because we’re sinners. Yet, if we link ourselves to Christ, then he will come and, instead of giving us the punishment, he’ll apply it to the cross where Jesus took it. Instead of disqualifying us from the promise, he’ll apply the blood of Jesus to us, which includes us into the promise. This is the scandalous mystery of God’s grace that is for you and me, no matter what we have done, and the truth is, no matter what we’re going to do.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6, says, Don’t you know that you are temples of the living God? His Spirit is inside of you. And if you were going to go join yourself to a prostitute, in some sick way you would be joining together God and the prostitute. You need to understand this is what you are doing.

As I was kind of unpacking that in my mind, and as we were singing that song about Egypt today, I just felt the Lord was saying, “David, the ones you’re praying for, the ones you know that are filled with my Spirit and yet they’re kind of going off,” he said, “I want you to know that I’m going with them.” It broke my heart. Not because of what these people are doing in their foolishness or deception, but because of how much God loves them. That he’s willing to even go into the sickness, into the depravity, into the detestable things in order to be one step away from them, so that the minute they turn around like that prodigal, he’s right there with open arms.

Basically, he was saying, “Hey, David, my holiness can handle whatever sin someone might throw at me.” There is a lot more to unpack there and we don’t have the time. But I just want you to know that God is with you, and he will go to the ends of the earth. He will go into whatever you take him into in order to be one step away from your salvation and your redemption, and to get you back into the promise that he so longs to give you and the generations after you.

Let’s pray. It’s always important for us to remember that when we say, “Let’s pray,” at Living Streams we don’t necessarily mean let’s say some more words. Prayer really is more about listening than talking. So I want to create this time of response right now where we can listen to the Spirit of God and see what he’s saying to the church today. His Spirit alone knows how to make correct application in each of our lives. The Spirit alone knows how to bring conviction instead of condemnation into our hearts. So please don’t hear anything I have to say. Just listen to what the Spirit is saying.

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David Stockton 2/28/21 David Stockton 2/28/21

A Discerning Heart

Well welcome to Living Streams. We’re going to be in First Kings. So if you want to grab a bible and turn there. First Kings is super old, so old. It’s like major old, old, old writings. So old that, if you’re cool, you would never even pay attention to them. But we’re not trying to be cool. We’re trying to be correct. We’re trying to find the Lord in it all. This is the Old Testament.

Series: A Kingdom Divided
February 28, 2021 - David Stockton

Well, welcome to Living Streams. We’re going to be in First Kings. So if you want to grab a bible and turn there. First Kings is super old, so old. It’s like major old, old, old writings. So old that, if you’re cool, you would never even pay attention to them. But we’re not trying to be cool. We’re trying to be correct. We’re trying to find the Lord in it all. This is the Old Testament. There are a lot of people in society who wouldn’t call it the Old Testament, they’d just call it the Tanakh. But in our testament structure of the Christian church, we have Old Testament and New Testament. This is old, Old Testament. It’s not even like new Old Testament.

But these words, it’s so amazing how much truth and health they have for us today and what we’re dealing with in our super advanced, 2021 culture, where we know the answer to everything now, or at least can ask Siri what it is. But in this passage we talked about last week, that there’s lots of connections to today. There is uneasy transfer of power. There’s debates and divisions over taxes. Yeah. Political issues. There is building of walls, whether we should build the walls around Jerusalem and fortify them or not. And there’s a continuous redefining of who God is and what his role is in society.

We, as Americans, the framers of our nation said some phrases that still stand strong today. “One nation under God” is something that we claim. We also put “In God we trust” on our money. Which is just hilarious, right? Because, what do we really trust in, right? Sorry. I thought that was funny. You can laugh. It’s church, but you can laugh. But if it’s just a bad joke, you don’t have to laugh.

Anyway, the word God there, when the framers of our nation were using that word, yes, there’s some debate about how they felt about God, but there’s no debate about whether they were talking about the Judeo-Christian concept of who God is. But nowadays, when we say, “One nation under God,” or “in God we trust,” our politicians, our presidents, and our society as a whole, have done a lot of expansive work to that word, God.

And that was true of what was happening in Israel in that day. Israel was God’s nation. They were the nation of Yahweh. They were rescued by Yahweh from Egyptian slavery. Yahweh, the burning bush God that became a burning mountain God, that defeated all of the gods of Egypt. And it basically carved out a space in Israel, in the land of Canaan, for his people, and defeated all the gods of Canaanites. He had established himself as the God above all gods. And Israel knew that and believed that and accepted that.

But now, as we follow the history of First and Second Kings, what we’re seeing is that God is kind of being redefined. And, in fact, we mentioned last week that, like we have a cross in here that represents Jesus, that represents that Jesus Christ loved us and died for us. And if God was willing to send his own Son to die for us, how would he not be willing to give us every good thing so we can rest as sheep following the Shepherd and really say, “I shall not want.”

And we look at this cross and we’re reminded that Jesus told us that if we really want to follow him, 90% of the time, and maybe even more—I’m just too scared to say it—we’ll be dying to ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him. Denying yourself. Denying your desires. Putting those things secondary to the word of God. That is the life of a Christian. And this cross is here to remind us. But this cross represents something to us.

And in Israel’s day, in First King’s day, in their worship places, they never really took down Yahweh or the worship of Yahweh, but they started to add other things. They put a little something for Baal over there. A little something for Asherah over there. And basically, they just started to redefine the name of God and redefine what it meant to worship God. They thought, if we’re going to get the goodness of the Yahweh God, why don’t we get a little goodness of Baal god? A little goodness of Asherah? We’ll get a lot of goodness.

Not realizing that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is a jealous God. That doesn’t mean he’s like that weird girlfriend or boyfriend you had in junior high. What that means is, he’s jealous like a wife would be if a husband decides he wants other wives also. It is right for that woman to not stand for that. It’s a righteous jealousy. And God is jealous for you. He doesn’t want to be one of your gods. He says, “I’m the whole thing, or I’m out.”

And what happened in Israel is, they continued to say, “We want more than just Yahweh.” And at one point God said, “I’m out.” And they fell into destruction and captivity and exile and lost everything.

That’s the story of First Kings. Jeremiah was the writer of First Kings. And Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. And the reason he’s known as the weeping prophet is because he was called by God to prophesy to Israel during all this time. And he was telling them, “Hey, don’t add other gods. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.” And every time he did they would just take him and put him in prison, or stick him in a pit or something. Or just reject him or laugh at him or make fun of him. That was basically the history of his prophecy. He was speaking the words of truth, but they were not receiving it as a society.

And then Jeremiah sits down, now that they’ve all been destroyed or taken into exile, and he’s writing the books of First and Second Kings to remind the generations to come of what took place in Israel, God’s chosen, holy people,, and how they basically prostituted themselves to other gods.

I mentioned last week that image of the frog. If you take a frog and put it in boiling water it will just jump out because it’s hot and it doesn’t like it. But if you take a frog and put it in a cold pot of water and then bring it up to boil, the frog will stay in there and die. Again, I’ve never tried it. I’ve heard it’s true. But I do need to apologize to everybody. Because last week I talked about it. The whole time I was talking about a frog. I was talking about Jeremiah. And I never once mentioned that Jeremiah was a bullfrog. And I actually had people come up to me afterwards and said, “Dude. You could have just said it one time. I couldn’t get through the rest of the message because you didn’t say it.” So Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Got it. Everybody’s cool with that. Sorry. I should have seen it. I should have made a. joke. But I missed it. My bad.

Which, by the way, brings me to one other confession. For all those who came to the Christmas Eve service, I was wearing a sweatshirt that my wife got me. It’s a picture of Jesus and on it, it says, “YOLO, J/K, BRB.” So to translate, that means, “You only live one. Just kidding. Be right back.” So that’s what it said. But I was wearing a coat over it that basically was obscuring a lot of the letters. So you saw it. And I’d point over here and you’d get that part. Then I’d be like ‘over here’ and you’d get a little bit more. But you could never get the whole thing at once. And I mentioned in one of the services, but I didn’t in the others. So you never got it. Total mistake. Messed with everybody’s brain. I hoarded about that a, too, afterwards. Those are the people I love to hear from, honestly. It’s so fun. Because it’s like, “Did you hear anything I said?” No. It’s more fun that way.

Anyway, Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Weeping prophet. The two hundred to three hundred years of decline in Israel’s history as they were forsaking Yahweh by adding other gods. We mentioned last week some of the gods, some of the idolatry that’s trying to work its way into the church. Obviously we have to talk about greed and pride. Jesus himself talked about the weeds that choke out the good seed: the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches. We want to talk about that. I want to add to that list a couple of forms of idolatry trying to work its way into the church right now. One would be American nationalism. One would be American progressivism. If you don’t know what I mean by that, but those are two political agendas that are borrowing Christian language, that are trying to hijack Christianity and use it for their own gains. They are camouflaging as Christianity, but they are really evil, deceptive idolatries. And one is housed on the political left and one is housed on the political right. And many of us bit into that idolatry last year and we need to repent. We need to get back to what is true and what is right and watch out for those things. But I’m offending both sides, so…either everyone’s angry or everyone’s happy. I don’t know.

One last thing before we jump in. This is a little timeline. It’s one of the most helpful things that I’ve ever received in studying the Bible, getting these timelines. This is one for First Kings and Second Kings. It’s so important. United Kingdom. Divided Kingdom. At the beginning of First Kings, Solomon is king. In Israel, Saul was the first king. Then David, then Solomon. And all twelve tribes were united in one kingdom called Israel. And then, by Solomon’s day, Israel had really become world-power status. David had conquered everybody. They had peace all around. Solomon was wise. And then Solomon’s son was Rehoboam.

But Rehoboam thought it would be good to tax everybody and kind of be this really strong dictator presence, because that was what Solomon sort of was. But Rehoboam wasn’t able to cash the checks he was writing, so to speak, so the ten tribes of the north—it wasn’t really a civil war, it was more of a civil ‘peace out.' “We’re out. We don’t want to be part of you guys anymore.” So the ten tribes of the north made Jeroboam their king. They retained the name Israel. Then the two tribes in the south, Judah and Benjamin, they became the kingdom of Judah. So as you read through, you read about the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.

They are actually kind of united in those twelve tribes, but they are divided as a nation now. And then Israel was in the north. They were conquered by Assyria around 722 and then in the south, Babylon came and exiled those in Judah in 586 B.C. and that’s where you pick up new prophets and new books in the Bible.

So anyway, that’s what’s going on. So 1 Kings 3, Solomon is now king. In chapter 2 he was firmly established, even though there was not a peaceful transfer of power. And this is what he does in his first acts as king, according to the writer of First Kings.

1 Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. 2 The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. 3 Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

So there’s tons of foreshadowing going on right here. Just so you know—you don’t have to pick it all up now—but when it talks about one of the very first things that Solomon did was marry a daughter from a foreign king, that is the beginning, that was one of the next thousand of these kind of relationships that Solomon would get involved in. And it didn’t end up being a good thing, just so you know.

And then the high places. People were sacrificing at high places. There wasn’t a really clear, consolidated idea of where and how to worship Yahweh. People were making up their own thing a little bit.

And then Solomon was actually doing what at the Lord asked him to do. He was following the commandments passed down by Moses and David adhered to, except one big thing. He was worshiping in the high places.

4 The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. 5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7 “Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

So there’s this moment where Solomon is not doing everything quite right. But the Lord is still faithful to show up to him and he says, “Solomon, ask for anything and I’ll give it to you.” And Solomon decides that want he wants to ask for is he wants a listening heart, a discerning heart, a heart that can listen and hear, and find God’s perspective, find what is true and right, find what is true and false. And as you keep reading, the Lord is so pleased with what Solomon asks for, he kind of goes off for a little bit. He’s just pumped. He’s so pleased at what Solomon is doing, that he says, “Solomon, not only and I going to give you a heart of wisdom, I’m going to give you a heart of wisdom that is better than anyone that’s ever come before you, and better than anyone that ever comes after you. And in addition to that, I’m going to give you power and wealth and all these others things, because that’s what I thought you were going to ask for.” Not really. He’s God. He knows what he was going to ask for.

He was so pleased by what Solomon asked for. It meant so much to God that he was doing this. In some ways, I think it kind of made God feel like Solomon was also a man after his heart, just like David, his father. We talked bout what that meant last week. But I think, and Dan Riccio was helping me with all this—he’s a guy in our church that’s a scholar and he helps me a lot—but he kind of unpacked this for me.

Why was it so pleasing to God for Solomon to ask this? And what he drew out of there was, basically, what Solomon was doing was refusing to set himself up as the judge of what is right and wrong. He was basically in this thing saying, “God, I don ’t know what to do. I’m this little child. I need a heart that can listen. I need a heart that can hear you. I need a heart that is submitted to you. Because you alone can see things right and true. And you alone can know what is just and right.” And by refusing to do this, he was honoring God. He was worshiping God. He was giving God that highest place. Not only in his own life, but in the nation of Israel.

And for us, if we really want to follow the Lord, we will have to continually refuse to take the throne of our own lives. We will have to ask he Lord to help us be those who discern what is right and true, not determine what is right and true, if that makes sense. In our society, we don’t want to listen and learn. We want to yell and scream and say, “This is right and true.” We want to determine. We want to throw off the bondage of the oppressive, antiquated scriptures that God has given us, so that we can determine for ourselves what is right. And that was not Solomon’s heart at all, and it pleased the Lord so much.

And the second thing that pleased the Lord so much was his refusal to just be about what pleases him, or what is popular in society. He was saying, “God, I don’t just want to know how to please myself, or how to please the people. I want to know how to do what pleases you.” And, again, our society is totally given over at this point to “whatever pleases you must be the right thing. Whatever is most popular must be the right thing.” And that’s absolute idolatry. And the refusal of those things brings honor to God. It’s worship to God. It pleases his heart.

And then the writer goes on and tells us a story to show and demonstrate how Solomon received this gift, that it wasn’t just kind of ethereal, like, “Oh, Solomon. You’re so smart now.” But he gives us a story of how this worked out in practical life. He talks about these two prostitutes.

They were sleeping one night. It sounds like they might have been int he same home. Maybe the same brothel or something. And they’re in there. They both have newborn babies, which again, brings all kinds of things to mind. Challenges, difficulties. But even worse than that is, they go to bed one night, and one of the moms rolls over and smothers her child to death, and wakes up in the middle of the night and realizes she has killed her own child. And in that moment of heartbreak and despair, she decides to do something. She takes the dead child and lays it next to this other woman and takes her living child and comes and puts it next to her without anyone knowing.

And so, in the morning, when they wake up, this woman finds out that there’s this child that she was sleeping with is dead. But as she looks at the child, she knows, as only a mother can know, “This is not my child.” And as she looks across, she sees her child with this other woman. The woman is saying, “No, no no. This is my child. You’re just saying that because you’re upset because you killed your baby.”

And whatever happens, this very street-level, small town kind of situation spreads out into other people who hear about it. No one can tell what’s going on. Ultimately, these two prostitutes have this situation that’s so hard to know what to do, and so heart-wrenching, it spreads across all Israel to finally make it into King Solomon’s courts. It basically makes it to the Supreme Court. No one knows what to do about this heart-wrenching, difficult situation.

And this is what Solomon begins as a king to deal with and decide upon. And so, in this moment the whole court is gathered together and Solomon is presented with the case. He’s got to decide what to do. And some of you know the story, so you’re cheaters. Stop cheating for just a second. And just catch how intense this moment must have been.

In some ways it seems like a moment that maybe we’re dealing with right now. When we have people with genuine gender dysphoria or challenging sexual desires that ago against so much of biology and society. And they don’t know what to do. And it’s very difficult. It’s been difficult since the desires or the confusion first showed up. And now we’re living in a society that is saying all kinds of different messages about what is right and true. And in a society that basically is saying the word of God is old and oppressive and should be done away with, or just interpreted to serve whatever you think is right.

It’s a tough situation. It’s challenging because it’s real and painful, and it’s hard. Do we stick with what the word of God says very clearly from beginning to end? Do we take what God wrote into the fabric of humanity about gender and marriage and family? Or do we allow something within us to go, “No. Maybe that’s not true.” Or, “Maybe that’s not true for me.” It’s very, very difficult.

Or think about what’s going on in the black community, as they experience all this confusion and hardship, some of what Michael described. That’s just one story among many. They look around and they’re not quite sure where they fit in society. They look around and they see other people experiencing things that they don’t know if they’ll ever be able to experience. They see people with their own color skin going through struggles. And we have to figure out what we can do to help the situation. And some people are saying we should go this way, some people we should go this way. All kinds of different offerings are being offered, some of them in line with biblical values, some of them way off and even against biblical values.

We have to decide, “What do we do?” And the first thing I want you to realize is King Solomon so he’s got to decide this thing. But he could also just write this off, ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen. He’s still king. But for you and I, we are called to be a kingdom of priests. Kings and priests of God. We are supposed to be salt and light in this world. We need to go into situations like this and bring the truth and love of God so that justice can actually happen. We don’t sit around and wait for society to figure it out. They never will. We have the Spirit of God. We’ve been cleansed with the blood of Jesus. We have the word of God. And we need to be going and finding situations and not shrinking away from them, but begging God for the wisdom to actually do something that helps. It’s our call. That’s what Jesus did.

So Solomon, in this situation of impossible, no way to know. Solomon didn’t know what was right. He didn’t know who was lying and who was telling the truth. But he had asked the Lord for a discerning heart. In this moment, something came into his mind. Not what was true or what was right, but a way to find out what was true or right. So he calls to someone and says, “Bring me a sword.” So they bring him a sword. At that time there were a lot more swords lying around, I guess. If I just said, “Bring me a sword,” I don’t know how long it would take for me to actually get a sword. But it was quick. He got a sword.

Then he walks down to this little baby and he says, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to cut the baby in half and I’m going to give half to that mom, half to that mom.” And you can almost feel the collective sigh in the room, “Great. Our new king is absolutely insane. This is not going to be good. How could he do that?”

If the media was there, think of all the story lines that would go out. And as he lifts that sword to go chop that baby, one of the moms cries out and says, “Please stop! Just give her the baby. Please do not hurt the baby!”

Solomon puts the sword down and says, “I’m going to make my ruling now. Take this baby and give it to the woman that was willing to give up that son’s life just to protect him. Because she’s the true mom.” And everyone in the room didn’t have to debate what was true and right. They didn’t have to wonder, “Oh, was this really right?” Everyone in that moment knew exactly what was true and what was right. And they all rejoiced.

Solomon’s renown obviously spread as a great king of wisdom. But this is, and I mean I don’t know how else to say it, this is what we as the people of God are called to do. To be salt and light. To execute justice in our world. To right the wrongs in society. Just like Solomon was able to do in this moment. Just like Jesus, the one we’re following, did time and time again when they came and put him in an impossible situation. “Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law says we should stone her. What do you say?”

And Jesus was able to create a moment, come up with another option that caused everyone to know that God is in this place, and go home with their pride and their judgment that was false, and this woman to walk free and to know the love of God.

We are the Church. We are the Bride of Christ. We are his sons and daughters. This is our call, to walk in this way. So how do we do it? How do we do it? Well, first I think we’ve got to pray and ask the Lord for a listening heart, a discerning heart. Absolutely. And then, after we’ve done that, we’ve go to go to this place where, when we are faced with this situation, we’ve got to listen. A discerning heart is a listening heart.

So when someone comes to you with something they are carrying, you don’t immediately say this or that, you listen to what’s going on. You hear them out. And you listen for what the Lord is saying. And in this moment, somehow the Lord put in Solomon’s mind, Get a sword. Pretend to chop the baby. Then you’ll find out what’s true.

For me and my wife, one time it was, Go to Belize and see what I have for you there. It was like, “Whoa. We’ve got a one-year-old daughter. We can’t just be going to Belize. It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got all kinds of people telling us that.”

Then the second time the Lord told us to go, I had a kid in a wheelchair. You can’t just go places with kids in wheelchairs. It didn’t make any sense. But we had this idea that we were supposed to go.

Solomon had this idea. But he also had the courage to walk in it. The courage to try it out. And so he got the sword and he went for it. What came was a revelation that made it clear for everybody that it was right.

And by God’s grace, we’ve come back from Belize. Everyone that knows us, that knows our story, they’re like, “Yeah, I think that was right.” Now you say that. Telling us, “Don’t do it.” Now you’re saying, “Oh, yeah. That was the Lord. That was great.” That’s the way it goes sometimes.

But one last thing. We’ve got to pray for a discerning heart, definitely. We’ve got to make sure we listen when he Lord is speaking to us in each and every situation. And we’ve got to have the courage to walk those things out. So that not only us, but everybody else can see what the Lord’s doing.

But one last thing that we cannot forget is that Solomon asked for a sword. He asked for a sword and, in the scriptures, it’s very clear to us in Hebrews chapter 4:

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

What we have in this book right here, whether you like it or not, whether it adheres to your desires or not, whether it’s popular in society or not, this is the sword that we have to cut through the crap. This is the sword that we have. And this is not this sword’s first rodeo. Societies come and go but the word of God has stood forever, and will withstand whatever our society decides it wants to do. This is living and powerful. We’re reading a book that is thousands of years old and it’s speaking right to the core of our society today. It’s alive. And it is powerful. And it is trustworthy. You can stand on this. And it is becoming more and more unpopular, more and more resisted, and more and more offensive—not because anything’s wrong with this. But Solomon used a sword.

And Jesus is doing the same thing with us. He’s telling us we need to use the sword. When you look at Jesus’ life. When the devil came and tempted him. He gave him three temptations. When we read those temptations, it’s almost fairytale. But those were falling right at the core identity that was in Jesus. He was hungry. He was God. And the temptations actually kind of went right at the core of those issues. And yet, Jesus Christ answered every single one of those temptations with a scripture that actually came straight from the Old Testament. He knew how important in the day of opposition, in the day of temptation, to use the word of God and know the word of God.

For us, as people, if we want to get it right in 2021, if we don’t want to be blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine, we need to know the word of God. We need to stand on the word of God.

There’s one organization I’m investigating right now, especially in the idea of justice. They’re called the AND Campaign. There are all these social justice organizations that are basically resisting or anti-biblical values. Why can’t it be social justice and biblical values? Why can’t we understand that our biblical values actually command and demand us to do social justice. But also, if we try to do social justice without biblical values, we’re just causing more harm than good. There are lots of organizations like that right now.

Solomon used the sword. Solomon prayed for a discerning heart. He listened to see what the Lord might say. He walked courageously in that. And he never forgot to use the sword.

Will you guys pray with me? I thought it would be good for us to just go to our knees right now if you’re able. Online or in person, just spend a moment coming before the throne of God, our Father Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, Who has never spoken a word that wasn’t true. Who’s never thought a thought that wasn’t beautiful. Who’s never done a single thing that wasn’t for our good.

Father in heaven, you are holy. You see everything clearly. You cannot be moved. You can’t be manipulated. You cannot be deceived. And you are so hungry for justice. So we, Lord, we ask that you would give us a discerning heart. I pray for each person right now that is touched by one of these difficult situations we’ve mentioned, someone who is feeling all of the burden of the divide of race in our country, whether it’s their own personal feelings or someone they love, I pray you’d give them a discerning heart, Lord. That they’d be able to do something beautiful in their community, just like Solomon did on this day.
I pray for those with gender dysphoria, or are dealing with sexual attractions that don’t fit in line with your scriptures. I pray you’d meet them right where they are, that they’d know that you’re for them, you love them, and you are a great rewarder of those who honor you, no matter what the cost is.
We need your wisdom in our day. Jesus, we thank you for your words and your life example.

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