WWUTT 464 The Evil of Jeroboam and Rehoboam?

Rehoboam and Jeroboam, two kings with names that rhyme, and two hearts that were far from God.

And the Lord destroyed them both, as He will do to anyone who does not worship

Him, when we understand the text. This is

When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature

New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We continue our study of first kings today in Chapter 14, if you want to open up your

Bible there. So we've seen the fall of Solomon, that was in Chapter 11, and then the kingdom split into the northern kingdom, made up of the ten tribes of Israel, and the southern kingdom, which is

Judah, and also includes Benjamin. Jeroboam would reign over Israel, those ten northern tribes, and Rehoboam the son of Solomon would rule over Judah, the southern kingdom.

Now so far in the story, we've really just been keeping up with what Jeroboam has been up to, but eventually here in Chapter 14, we'll head back south and see what

Rehoboam is doing. God told Jeroboam that if he loved the

Lord with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength, then God would be with him and he would bless his reign over Israel.

But we've seen that Jeroboam has not done that. He has raised up the high places to false gods.

He raised up two golden calves and said to Israel, behold your gods who led you out of Egypt, just like Aaron did.

But Jeroboam has two golden calves instead of one now. So Jeroboam has done what is evil in the sight of the

Lord, and we continue with his story as we start off Chapter 14. At that time,

Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick and Jeroboam said to his wife, arise and disguise yourself that it will not be known that you are the wife of Jeroboam and go to Shiloh.

Behold, Ahijah the prophet is there who said of me that I should be king over this people.

Take with you 10 loaves, some cakes and a jar of honey and go to him. He will tell you what will happen to the child.

Jeroboam's wife did so. She arose and went to Shiloh and came to the house of Ahijah.

Now Ahijah could not see for his eyes were dim because of his age. And the

Lord said to Ahijah, behold, the wife of Jeroboam is coming to inquire of you concerning her son for he is sick.

Thus and thus shall you say to her. When she came, she pretended to be another woman.

But when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, he said, come in wife of Jeroboam.

Why do you pretend to be another? For I am charged with unbearable news for you.

Now in the narrative, we haven't seen her say anything, so it doesn't really explain how she was acting like another woman, just that she had disguised herself in such a way and was not planning on revealing to Ahijah that she was the wife of Jeroboam.

But he knew because he was a prophet, because God told him that the wife of Jeroboam was coming and gave a message to Ahijah to tell to Jeroboam's wife.

So she thought that she was coming to Ahijah to receive news about her son.

But the reality is that Ahijah was coming to her to tell her about what was going to happen concerning her husband.

So here we go, verse 7, go tell Jeroboam, thus says the Lord, the

God of Israel, because I exalted you from among the people and made you leader over my people

Israel and tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you. And yet you have not been like my servant

David, who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which is right in my eyes.

But you have done evil above all who were before you and have gone and made yourself other gods and metal images, provoking me to anger and have cast me behind your back.

Therefore, behold, I will bring harm upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both bond and free in Israel, and will burn up the house of Jeroboam as a man burns up dung until it is all gone.

Anyone belonging to Jeroboam who dies in the city, the dogs shall eat, and anyone who dies in the open country, the birds of the heavens shall eat, for the

Lord has spoken it. Arise, therefore, go to your house.

When your feet enter the city, the child shall die, and all Israel will mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the

Lord, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam. Moreover, the Lord will raise up for himself a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam today, and henceforth the

Lord will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water, and root up Israel out of this good land that he gave to their fathers and scatter them beyond the

Euphrates, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the Lord to anger, and he will give

Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, which he sinned and made Israel to sin.

Then Jeroboam's wife arose and departed and came to Tisra, and as she came to the threshold of the house, the child died, and all

Israel buried him and mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant

Ahijah the prophet. Now I want to jump back a little bit and highlight something that Ahijah said.

Verse 12, he says to the wife of Jeroboam, Arise therefore and go to your house.

When your feet enter the city, the child shall die, and all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the

Lord, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam. This is a child that we're talking about, a child who cannot take care of himself, has grown sick and dies, but what happens to him is not what

Ahijah prophesied was going to happen to Jeroboam and the rest of his household. They were all going to be eaten by the dogs or eaten by the birds of the air, but Jeroboam's son is going to be buried in the grave because, note that it says, in him there is found something pleasing to the

Lord. Now we've talked about this a little bit when we were in 2 Samuel and David had his affair with Bathsheba and the

Lord cursed the offspring that came from that adulterous affair. Through the prophet

Nathan, it was said to David that the child would die. So David fasted and prayed that maybe the

Lord would change his mind and maybe God, in forgiving the sins of David, would also let the child whom

Bathsheba was pregnant with live. But what ended up happening was the child became sickly and indeed died.

And David said of the child, his son, and this is 2 Samuel 12, 23, now he is dead and why should

I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.

And when we were talking about that particular passage, we mentioned that the Lord will indeed take children, infants, even those who die in the womb, to heaven to be with him.

They have not yet done anything good or bad by which to be judged. And in the book of Revelation, it says that at the final judgment, great books will be opened and everyone will be judged according to what they have done.

Well, a child has not yet done anything. And so the Lord will indeed take those who have died in the womb or have died young before they could make a decision to follow or reject

God. They will be taken to heaven to be with him. We could also include the mentally handicapped in this as well, as they do not possess the mental faculties to hear the gospel and be able to respond to it.

Yet the Lord will show mercy to these as well. And here we have another instance of this in first Kings 14.

Another example that we can use for God has found something pleasing in the son of Jeroboam, though Jeroboam is wicked.

He has not done anything pleasing to the Lord. He has worshiped false gods and is encouraged

Israel to worship false gods. And yet God finds something pleasing in his son, not because his son did anything great, but because the

Lord is merciful and gracious even to the child of this wicked man.

So he will be taken to heaven to be with the Lord, while Jeroboam and his household will be cursed and stricken to the ground because of the evil that they have done.

I bring this up to you simply that we might behold and rejoice in how great a

God we serve, how merciful and gracious he is. Everyone is born into the sin of Adam.

We have all inherited Adam's sin, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

And yet God shows mercy and grace even to those who are conceived in sin.

So let us praise him for his glory and goodness. Here we are in verse 19 as we read about the death of Jeroboam.

Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred and how he reigned, behold, they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel.

And the time that Jeroboam reigned was 22 years and he slept with his fathers and Nadab, his son, reigned in his place.

So since our lesson last week, I received an email from someone asking, what does it mean when we read statements like this in first and second

Kings? All the acts of Jeroboam, aren't they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

What book is that? It can't be first and second chronicles because nothing else about Jeroboam is detailed there.

So what does this mean? The book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel or whenever it references some sort of book of the chronicles of the kings, well, this was simply the royal record.

Anytime Jeroboam made some sort of a decision or a statement or passed a law or somebody came and visited

Jeroboam, he had his scribes, his log keepers, record keepers that would write all this stuff down.

So it was, it was just kind of a log of the things that the king did probably was not a very interesting read.

It was probably very boring and ledger like, and it wasn't, it wasn't included in the oral tradition of the

Hebrews either. So this wasn't something that everybody read and remembered and talked about among one another.

It was, it was just kept in like a royal library. So whenever the books of the

Israelites were burned or destroyed, those were not among their writings that were kept or preserved. We don't have any record of them.

Maybe somebody archeologically will discover them one of these days or discover something like it, but it's not, not something that would necessarily be included in the canon of scripture.

So this is, this is not, this book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel is not significant to what it is that we're reading about here.

This narrative of the monarchy in Israel that extends through first and second kings and also in first and second chronicles.

So now we're going to catch up with what's going on with Rehoboam in the Southern kingdom. This is verse 21.

Now, Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was 41 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem, the city that the

Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. His mother's name was

Nema the Ammonite, and Judah did what was evil in the sight of the

Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed more than all their fathers had done, for they also built for themselves high places and pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree.

And there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the

Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And you might be reading that going, boy, they did even worse in Judah than they did in Israel.

And yeah, that would be the case, especially when you consider that that they lived in Jerusalem. They had

Jerusalem and the temple, which could not be said of Israel. They didn't have access to the temple like Judah did.

And yet they still built high places and pillars and the Asherim. And the mention of all of that has significance.

Deuteronomy chapter 12, we read the following. These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the

Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess all the days that you live on the earth.

You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.

You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their

Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place.

You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, but you shall seek the place that the

Lord your God will choose out of all the tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go.

And they could even go there, Jerusalem, which was part of Judah. And yet they didn't.

They raised up high places to these false gods, which the Lord told them to tear down before they had even entered into the land.

So everything that Judah did wrong completely contradicts the command of the

Lord in Deuteronomy chapter 12. Now, this reference to the Asherim.

What is that? What is the Asherim? Well, the Asherim were poles that were erected as an homage to the goddess

Asherah. And there was probably reliefs that were carved into the poles, maybe images of her and her name carved around the top.

Asherah is the wife of the chief god El, and she is the mother of all the other gods.

For the Israelites, this meant to them that Asherah was the wife of God.

And Deuteronomy chapter 12, God said, you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way by raising up the

Asherim. Instead, you were supposed to tear it down and burn it with fire. And here we have

Judah raising up these pillars to this false goddess whom they believed to be the wife of God.

Now, consider that the Mormons do the same thing. The Mormon faith believes that we are all the spiritual offspring of celestial sex between heavenly father and heavenly mother.

In fact, Jesus Christ and the devil are also the offspring of heavenly father and heavenly mother.

That makes the two of them brothers. So the Mormons are doing the very thing that Judah did here in first Kings chapter 14 by worshiping

Asherah, the wife of God. The thing that God says in Deuteronomy 12, you shall not do.

There is no wife of God. He does not share his glory with anyone. He is the

Lord our God from everlasting to everlasting. He is one God in three persons, father, son, and Holy Spirit.

The son is not the spiritual offspring of the father, but is co -equal to the father submitting to the father's will.

And yet you have the Mormon faith that is basically, in a sense, worshiping

Asherah. So what is going to happen to Rehoboam because they did such wicked things, not only raising up the high places, but also employing cult male prostitutes.

So here is what the Lord did to Judah. Verse 25, in the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem.

He took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house.

And if you'll remember this, the armament that Solomon had built for himself, full of all of these gold tools and weapons, and this is what the king of Egypt came and took all of the stuff that was in that repository.

He took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, the treasures of the king's house. He took away everything.

He took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made. And King Rehoboam made in their place shields of bronze and committed them to the hands of the officers of the guard who kept the door of the king's house.

And as often as the king went into the house of the Lord, the guard carried them and brought them back to the guard room.

Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?

And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually. And Rehoboam slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David.

His mother's name was Nehama, the Ammonite, and Abisham, his son, reigned in his place.

A friend of mine the other day pointed out on Twitter that Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven.

Why is that? Why would Christ talk more about hell? So that he would warn everybody what would happen to those who did not worship him.

The penalty is great, it is severe, eternal separation from God and torment in hell.

But for those who worship God, for those who know his son, Jesus Christ, there will be great riches and reward in heaven as we become fellow heirs with him in his eternal kingdom.

So let us not share the glory of God with anyone or anything, but he deserves all praise and glory.

Worship Christ the Son and you will be saved. Let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord God, I pray that you would keep us steadfast in the faith. Turn our hearts away from any wicked thing and let us not raise up anything on this earth that would take precedence over you.

For if we do such a thing, we raise up an idol. Anything that we think we need more than God or equal to God is something that we are attempting to share your glory with.

And you are not going to share your glory with anyone or anything. So keep our hearts fixed upon you in your heavens, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

When Christ who is our life appears, so we also will appear with him in glory.

Forgive us our sins and lead us not into temptation, but to do the will of God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And we ask this in Jesus name, amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.