Bible Study - 2 Chronicles 13:6-9

May be seated.

Dear Heavenly Father. Oh, we thank you for this evening. We pray that you would bless our time in your Word and in prayer. You would give us comfort and peace through these means we have of coming to you and they would give us great confidence in Your activities in the world in Jesus name.

Amen. All right, please turn to you. 2nd Chronicles chapter 13. We are looking at verses 6 through 9 in particular. Relatively short passage here. 2nd Chronicles 13 6 or 9. Yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat a servant of Solomon the son of David rose up and rebelled against his lord and Certain worthless scoundrels gathered about him and defied Rehoboam the son of Solomon.

When Rehoboam was young and irresolute and could not withstand them. Now you think to withstand the kingdom of the Lord in the hand of the sons of David. Because you are a great multitude and to have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made for you made you for gods.

Have you not driven out the priests of the Lord the sons of Aaron and the Levites and made priests for yourselves like the peoples Of the other lands. Whoever comes for ordination with the young bull or seven rams becomes a priest of what are no gods.

Abijah’s Confrontation of Jeroboam and the True Heir of David

Right, so In this passage here we continue with.

Abijah's.

Confrontation of Jeroboam by being the king of Judah. Jeroboam being the king of Israel. Israel being the northern kingdom. So here in verse 6 yet Jeroboam the son of Nebat the servant of Solomon the son of David rose up and rebelled against his lord.

So as we've been going through I always assign the Associated reading in first Kings, but if you remember. This is a passage that is unique. Baja is remembered much less favorably in first Kings. But here's this passage about how he's standing against Jeroboam it in a honorable way.

And there are no associated reading here here because this is unique to second Chronicles. So what is the significance of that of Solomon being the son of David? The throne belongs to him that's kind of the key thing that he's talking about here is the real heritage of the kingdom of Judah that.

That this really does belong to Judah rather than to Israel. Everything was promised to David and to Solomon. But Jeroboam who was the servant of Solomon has rebelled against Solomon. He does not have Right to this the chronicler has in the past when Quoting first Kings now.

It's not quoting first Kings here. But it has in the past when quoting first Kings dropped the title the son of Nebat. It just says Jeroboam at times when it just says when it says in first Kings Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

But here he chooses to include that and I think it's with significance because he's comparing him Solomon son of David Jeroboam the son of Nebat. That's not an obscure title the son of David yet the son of Nebat who's Nebat who cares about Nebat?

Anyway, it makes a comparison, you know, Solomon's the real heir. Jeroboam is not. Jeroboam was wrong for rebelling. And yeah, of course that Lord for that question is Solomon. He rebelled against him.

And.

How does this relate to the preceding passages? Well.

It pairs.

That major premise with a minor premise the throne of David is a covenant of salt that lasts forever. Like we just read in the previous verse Right says ought you not to know that the Lord God of Israel gave the kingship of over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt.

Okay, so that's that's this major premise, right? Everything's given David anything that's not the David would be illegitimate. You're against David therefore you're illegitimate, right? So he combines these premises together.

To show he has no right to rebel against Solomon. All right verse 7 and worthless men gathered about him. Base fellows. Base fellows in Deuteronomy 13 13 Says certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city saying let us go and serve other Gods, which you have not known.

So there that term base fellows or worthless fellows is used again to describe people. Taking away people to idolatry. The literal phrase that's used for worthless fellows is the sons of Belial. You know from the New Testament that that is used to refer to Satan in 2nd Corinthians.

So these are sons of Belial. So just like in Deuteronomy it describes people taking people away to other gods. So Jeroboam is taking away the people to other gods to another king to other gods to worship.

Even if the golden calves bear the name of Yahweh. They are not Yahweh and the people are ultimately worshipping other gods by worshipping those. Yeah, why do they gather around Jeroboam in order to have?

Yep power in his government presumably. Yeah that he has people gathering around him right desiring some kind of something they can get out of him. Another time it talks about worthless fellows and scripture is when Jezebel gets people to make an accusation against Naboth right and so yeah, she gets worthless fellows to make an accusation Against Naboth.

They want something they Yeah. They just do what they have to do they sell their good word to Get something else. Anyway, these people are gathering around him because they're happy to get power from him if he rises up as king over Israel 7b who strengthens who strengthens themselves.

Who strengthened themselves against Rehoboam the son of Solomon when Rehoboam was young and tender-hearted and could not withstand them. This is an interesting Description. Because do you remember the circumstance in which they rebelled what had Rehoboam said to them?

You might remember? Yeah go for it. Yeah, right, yeah, my father disciplined you with whips, but I'll discipline you with scorpions. Hardly a tender-hearted the way that we would think of that phrase but Abijah is Describing him has one who is essentially young.

That's what he means by tender-hearted, you know, he's young. He's a novice. And they took advantage of him during that time when he had just come to throne didn't know what he was doing.

And so it was very opportunistic. Yeah, and so this is.

Yeah, and so this shows the villainous nature of Jeroboam and those who would take advantage of of. The weakness of the kingdom had a transition point like that. Eight a and now you think to withstand the kingdom of Jehovah and hand of the sons of David.

All right, so the kingdom of the Lord is authority over Israel, right. That's the idea is that this is not just a kingdom of man. But particularly God's they are rejecting God's kingship by forming their own kingdom this second kingdom of Jeroboam instead of just the kingdom of the Son of David and That is ultimately rejecting God's own kingship.

It's not just the human kingship of David, but God's own kingship. They're rejecting and yeah, that that kingdom is in the hands of the sons of David because David is the true king that God has given authority and.

Power they're on the throne and the point of all the statement.

Of course, of course that Jeroboam is foolish for continuing to rebel. Any questions so far. Yeah.

Oh.

I don't know what you mean by that. Yeah, it's yes. There's there are evil people, right. Jesus describes The Jews are as many of the Jews and Pharisees being sons of Satan right? You're of the your father the devil.

Right, that's a. Yeah that all flows from what you see in Genesis 3. There's a seat of the woman in the seat of the serpent. I don't know if by that you're referring to a particular view of the Nephilim or something like that.

When you say the sons of.

Seth but.

At least. Yes, yeah, they will be worn against each other. The seat of the woman in the seat of the serpent. Second Corinthians 615 says what accord has Christ with Belial. Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

That's not a Divide that we're supposed to try to bridge a Lot of people do try to bridge that right you know little interfaith meetings or whatever to try to Try to have peace and unity where they just can't be they just can't be peace.

Yeah, there's only there's a limit to what kind of peace that you can have in the gospel. So long as people are sons of Satan. Okay, a B and you are a great multitude and with you are the golden calves which Jeroboam made for you.

Made you for gods. So the implication here is they're trusting in the wrong things right the trusting in the golden calves they're trusting in their numbers. They've got this inherent argument ad populum going on right ad populum meaning to the to the masses.

They think that because they have so many people that they are in the right and going to win if you remember the opening scene. Here they're out. Judah is out number two to one four hundred thousand two to eight hundred thousand so they have more people they have the golden calves which.

The frequent temptation and a lot of these battle scenes is that people see the number of altars they have or the number of idols They have as being a sign of more power. In fact when Sennacherib the king of Assyria Confronts Hezekiah or the servants representing him.

He says has not Hezekiah torn down all the altars of your God. Because he's in that and that does strike fear in the hearts of the people. They're like, oh, yeah Hezekiah did tear down all the altars to Yahweh.

But of course they weren't supposed to exist because those are false altars to him. And this is actually good as far as God's perspective. But people have their own ideas of religion of what makes religion powerful, but that's still the case today.

I mean, I frequently see people Have a very worldly view of religion such that. Beautiful buildings and like a Traditional aesthetic or something like that demonstrates the strength of their religion.

Such that well if you're in an old stone building that's got, you know mass, you know, it's a massive Cathedral. It's got beautiful architecture and images and things like that then that really shows that you've got a powerful brand of Christianity.

That's putting your trust in the wrong things. You know, I'd rather Go to a church that is a Shut down Pizza Hut building, you know, you can tell that it used to be a Pizza Hut building, right? There used to be a was it a tumblr blog or something like that?

That was that was just buildings that used to be Pizza Huts and every day they would post another picture of these things. I'd rather go to that if it had a clear doctrine gospel, then the vast majority of churches that have incredibly beautiful buildings, you know, that's just not a Sure caring about beautiful things as part is is natural if you believe what scripture says about beauty being a real thing, but That does not demonstrate the strength of The faith itself.

Yes.

Well, I'd have to look at that that passage because it's not it's not coming to mind.

Let's now build an altar not for burnt offering nor for sacrifice. Yeah, interesting. Oh. As a memorial, yeah, okay.

Yeah.

What's there? Yeah, beautiful things are good. It's not that we should try as hard as we can to be as ugly as we can or anything like that, but the kingdoms of this world you know find their strength in Very earthly senses of beauty, etc.

And really all that is supposed to be found In spiritual things even if you look at so there's the temple which is beautiful. And then what's the temple that we have. It's the people itself the congregation, right?

It's not the building and so part of what people are doing is trying to find the strength in the building or. Also, we're given even though the Old Testament worship had a bunch of instruments and everything harps and trumpets, etc.

We don't have to have any of those things in fact. If we had a lot of those things it would likely be a distraction to what we are supposed to be having which is just.

Singing yes.

Okay, yeah, I think you're talking about like seat-at-the-table kind of stuff trying to make. Trying to make the faith look more impressive to other people who are not.

In tune with.

Christianity it does seem like there's some overlap there. Yeah. Okay. 9a Have you not driven out the priests of Jehovah the sons of Aaron and the Levites and made you priests after the manner of the? peoples of other lands.

So if you remember what happened was Jeroboam. Basically removed all the removed all the Levites from their positions. And so they all fled to they all fled to Judah. So yeah, he has. He doesn't have the true priesthood.

He doesn't have true priesthood he doesn't have true Gods and then he doesn't have the true populace. All these things are by his own standard rather than the standards that God had set. 9b so that whatever comes to consecrate him.

Whoever comes to consecrate himself the young bull and seven rams the same may be a priest of those who are no gods. Yeah, the bulls and Rams is talking about a Consecration sacrifice this is describing five more rams than is required by Exodus.

So the idea is oh you just throw in some extra and that makes them extra good.

Yeah, that's not how it works and of course there's that scene in judges where.

There's the Levite that's made a priest who really has no duty being a priest. Even though he's Levite he has no Position being a priest. It's pretty clear that it's just Oh You know It'd be nice to have the salary and so I'll I'll just take the position etc.

There's this really famous old sermon called ten shekels and a shirt. If you listen to it, it's about this kind of attitude where The ministry is just something you kind of willy-nilly go into. Just for pragmatic reasons.

Any questions about all that? All right. So in what big way do people take advantage of the church?

How can you help prevent this? How can you help uphold? Right worship. I Think one of the particular things that this passage is getting at is. Well, it's getting at the people first of all, right? There are more people there are fancier there's fancier worship and there is.

Yeah.

There are these other priests that have better ordination sacrifices there are. Was there one more thing. Maybe that was it. Yeah, these all have very clear Analogies. In the modern church a lot of people feel like they're they're in the right if there's a lot of people.

Right that that kind of validates for example, the Willow Creek model or something like that. If you're familiar with that it's like the church business model where you where you've got the CEO on top who's making the right decisions to hit the KPIs and everything and.

It's you know bringing in as many people as possible and that shows that oh, yeah God's really blessing this all all the people are certainly a sign of God's blessing. Or that just by going to Samaria just by like Essentially purchasing the degree because you can pass all the tests and everything that is real qualification.

For ministry when you look at the qualifications at First Timothy 3 describes a lot of people shouldn't be even beginning.

That.

Yeah going to seminary because they're not they need to be working on other qualifications and.

Then.

Yeah, of course the the nature of worship. In fact, a lot of worship is so Sensual, you know just designed to stir up emotions without the actual intelligence Involved that instead of the you know, the mind the heart the soul leading your emotions It's the other way around where your emotions are taking over.

And a fairly idolatrous fashion very frequently and a lot of people feel like oh, yeah I got that feeling and so that's that's real worship. That means God is really with us frequently people will Yeah engage in all these false ways of thinking about their own religious experience.

And of course, I'm just talking about Errant versions of Christianity, of course, it's exists in all the false religions that they would look to those sorts of things.

Yes.

Right, yeah I'm just describing how people think that they have the strength of God when they don't Because they're looking at certain metrics that are not themselves Actually indicative of the strength of God, but of course now I'm just describing religious things.

You can look in incredibly secular Realm and see that too, you know people trust their money. They've got enough wealth. That means that that maybe they don't even call it divine favor, but whatever is going on in their mind.

That's giving them Confidence about their situation is basically a substitute. Whatever it is. It's substitute for the divine right, because that's their that's their source of strength and. Oh sure, yeah.

Yeah, there's all kinds of false worship that goes on churches all kinds of false People false laypeople and false clergy, which is really what this is getting at. This is false laypeople floss clergy false worship.

And they they have they have a sense of strength about all of them because they all feel very significant there's a I think I mentioned in a sermon recently that I've long time ago wrote a track about the Iglesia Ni Cristo, which is a Filipino cult.

One of the things they really like doing is Breaking Guinness World Records. They've broken a number of these for all kinds of silly things like biggest blood drive biggest indoor arena. Which they made on the 100th anniversary of the church, that's when I wrote the track.

And.

They feel that breaking Guinness Book World Records is Demonstration that they are the true Church of God like the fact that they can break a bunch of Guinness Book World Records. Our church hasn't broken any Guinness Book World Records, you know, but they have this really shows.

What's that? We do have we do have a few websites, yes, I don't know about the most but we have a few. Yeah, that's that's a crazy situation. Not to be too much of a distraction, but I was recently recounting this because um, I.

Don't know if you've seen.

Yeah, I think it was Matt Walsh's more recent documentary am I a racist or something like that. I forget what it what that I haven't seen it, but he posted a The clip from when he was found out that he was just there, you know.

Just there as you know with a false identity just to get more information for his video. And it's just it's very awkward seeing where they where they want him to leave. And I that's it looked a lot like me at that Bible study.

That the Iglesia Ni Cristo Bible say because they don't have literature that they write at least it's not at the time. Did they have literature that I could study? So I actually had to go to the Bible studies and I was up front with them that I want to know more about their religion so that I could explain to people in their Organization why they were wrong and they were fine with this.

But once I actually published a website about it and then showed up the next day They were it was it was that same awkward Bible study situation and they asked me to leave Little walk down memory lane there.

Yes. Yeah, right and so here you have Jeroboam just Using religion as some kind of tool. I mean, that's probably not what he's. The way he's thinking about it so directly he thinks he's just approaching religion any way anybody else would but It is you know, oh just this gives me strength.

So, you know Let's have more altars. Let's have more people. Let's have more. Yeah more priests etc. Yeah, and don't yeah don't derive comfort that way.

What's actually like the heretical.

The INC is very similar to Jehovah's Witnesses on almost everything. Except for they have like a slightly worse version of everything.

Yes.

Like for example So they don't believe in the deity of Christ like like Jehovah's Witnesses don't but then they additionally Do not believe in his pre-existence. So Jehovah's Witnesses would at least say that the Son of God pre-exists his birth.

They would deny he pre-exists his birth. For example, they don't think that you can understand the Bible without it being explained by one of their ministers. That's really the core issue. That's at the root of all of it.

Work salvation all the stuff. Yeah, you can read my tract out there. Okay, any other any other questions before you wrap this up. Let's go ahead and yes. Like I said people who just go the seminary track and think that that gives them a right to ordination right or not the seminary is a bad thing, I'm not saying that but there is a there is a sense where you can just go through some motions and do that or I mean, I know lots of people who have gotten ordained just to Perform a wedding, you know stuff like that.

Yeah, right and you know, they're not really doing a whole lot with that beyond doing a wedding but Still there's a lot of ways that people do not take the office seriously. Yeah, that that's. This passage is relevant to that.

Yeah, if you if you bypass the qualifications described in first Timothy 3 and Titus you are essentially doing what this is doing where you're taking a holy office and without the without the qualifications.

Yeah, no, I don't. I don't think I know enough to really comment on that yeah, that's that's all yeah. Okay, I will say that. I'm not a fan of things like the rise and fall of Mars Hill like that podcast.

That's. It's pointing out some legitimate problems, but it's doing it from a very leftist perspective. That's pretty much undermining a lot of legitimate religion. So yeah, I will that that one thing I will say is that I'm not a fan of rise and fall Mars Hill.

I've listened to some of that. But yeah. Okay, let's go ahead and pray dear Heavenly Father. We thank you for your word We recognize that it was a temptation for us to find our strength in other things or even be Intimidated when others are able to point at other things that seem significant to size to Emotional fervor all kinds of things.

We pray that you would give us a real confidence in What you are doing that we would see with the eyes of faith that we would trust your word and that it would give us Confidence as we fulfill the Great Commission Baptizing and making disciples of all nations in Jesus name.

Amen.