Chapter 14 of The Story January 4, 2015

When I think about the Bible, I picture it as one movie or television program which is cut into many parts. It’s like watching a television series or sequels that you don’t want to miss. Remember programs like the FBI, or Mission Impossible, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, and ER, the Star Wars movies or the Matrix? You knew the story would change, there might be some new characters, but there was a constant theme running throughout. It’s kind of like the Bible. The Bible is one story about God’s love for you and me, and during the course of the movie called the Bible, we see many stories and themes emerging, some good and some not so good.

Well, today, we’re looking at a not so good chapter in the life of the nation of Israel. We’re in chapter 14, or 1 Kings 12-16. The title of this chapter is A Kingdom Torn in Two. Kind of sounds like a horror movie doesn't it? Well, it kind of is! Last week we took a look at Solomon’s life. He was the wisest man on the planet. But, Solomon also had a love for the good things in life and in order to support this and to support the military, the people were heavily taxed and many felt the burden of being forced into hard labor. Eventually, Solomon died and the king-dom was passed on to his son, Rehoboam. This is where our story today picks up.

In June of 1858 Abraham Lincoln delivered a famous speech noted for the phrase "a house divided against itself cannot stand." He was accepting the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Illinois. Lincoln would go on to take his party’s nomination for president in 1860, a race which he won. This speech helped set into motion the defining event of Lincoln’s presidency – the Civil War. Slavery was the issue and our country was divided. 

As we saw in the previous chapter of The Story, Solomon failed to fully follow God. He allowed his many foreign wives to turn his heart from God. This resulted in God’s judgment and the consequence of a divided kingdom. After enjoying forty years of peace and prosperity, Israel would become divided.

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.” 1 Kings 11:11-13

Chapter 14

The main characters this week are Rehoboam and Jeroboam.

We meet Jeroboam in 1 Kings 11, when he was a young soldier in Solomon’s cabinet. He was very successful and rose in leadership. A prophet of God came to Jeroboam and told him he was going to become the next king of Israel. But he would have to wait. But Jeroboam was impatient and tried to take the kingdom from Solomon, Solomon tried to have him killed and Jeroboam escaped to Egypt.

Now I want to tell the story from a couple of points of view.

There are always two stories taking place at the same time. There’s the upper story, in which we see God taking action. This is the viewpoint from God’s perspective. We learn that the Bible is not a compilation of 100's of unrelated stories, but in reality from God’s point of view, its one beautiful love story for you and me; and His desire to get us back.

Then there’s the lower story. That’s our story, where life happens. It’s the day to day events which occur in our world and how we react to them. Like paying the bills, sickness, eating together, relationships, it’s our everyday life.

First, we’ll look at it from the lower story, looking at it from our point of view.

Well, there’s a conflict which occurs. That’s true in most storylines, and there’s always a cause for the conflict to occur. The conflict is found in 1 Kings 12:1-14

1 Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had gone there to make him king. 2 When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard this (he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), he returned from Egypt. 3 So they sent for Jeroboam, and he and the whole assembly of Israel went to Rehoboam and said to him: 4 “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.” 5 Rehoboam answered, “Go away for three days and then come back to me.” So the people went away. 6 Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. “How would you advise me to answer these people?” he asked. 7 They replied, “If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.” 8 But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him. 9 He asked them, “What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, ‘Lighten the yoke your father put on us’?” 10 The young men who had grown up with him replied, “These people have said to you, ‘Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter.’ Now tell them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. 11 My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.’” 12 Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, “Come back to me in three days.” 13 The king answered the people harshly. Rejecting the advice given him by the elders, 14 he followed the advice of the young men and said, “My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.” 15 So, the king did not listen to the people.

There’s our conflict. It appears from our point of view that Rehoboam made an unwise decision. He ignored the counsel of the elders and listened to the counsel of the younger men, who were serving him. This was a bad idea, and it created a major conflict. So, how was the conflict resolved?

Look at 1 Kings 12:16-17
16 When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king: “What share do we have in David, what part in Jesse’s son? To your tents, Israel! Look after your own house, David!” So the Israelites went home. 17 But as for the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah, Rehoboam still ruled over them.

Now skip down to verse 20, and we read, When all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David.

So, how was the conflict resolved? By the dividing of the kingdom. This once strong, powerful and united kingdom has been broken in two. As a result, the nation is weakened. To the north we have king Jeroboam, and he will be over 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. And they will be called the nation of Israel or Samaria. And in the south, its king Rehoboam, who will be over 2 tribes, Judah, and the small tribe of Benjamin.

Now, if we change the point of view of this story from the lower story to the upper story, where we see God’s point of view, we’re going to see something a little different. In our eyes the division was caused by an unwise decision by a young king. But when you look at this from the upper story perspective, we will see something very different. You see, it wasn’t Rehoboam’s decision which caused the split, it was his father’s decision, and it was Solomon’s decision, years before that.

There’s a phrase in military aviation which goes like this. The accident already occurred, we’re just waiting for the plane to arrive at the crash site. What does that mean? It means the accident occurred miles before the actual accident occurred, when the pilot or a member of the flight crew made a fatal decision, or there was something mechanical which was already wrong with the plane. This is when the accident actually occurred, now it’s a matter of time until the plane arrives to the actual crash site. The fatal accident occurred back here, it’s just going to take time to arrive at its final destination. This is precisely what happened to the nation of Israel, when Solomon was the pilot; he made a series of fatal decisions which were very important to God. However, the impact wasn’t immediately felt, but they would be felt years later; which guaranteed the future crash of the nation of Israel.

If you turn back to chapter 13, on the last page of that chapter; we see this fatal error, in 1 Kings 11:9-13 "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. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the LORD’s command. 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. 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. 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.”

Often times from a human perspective, even leaders think we’re in charge of things, only to discover God has an upper story plan which He’s working out. That’s what we see here. When Rehoboam realizes that Jeroboam has been made king of the northern part, Israel, which gives him an advantage; Jeroboam decides to go into battle with him in order to win back the 10 tribes he’s lost. But the Lord intervenes, and in 1 Kings 12:24, tells Rehoboam, ‘Do not go up to fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Go home, every one of you, for this is my doing.’” So they obeyed the LORD and went home, as the LORD ordered.

Now Rehoboam’s decision not to take the advice of the elders and to take the counsel of his younger friends was an unwise decision. But this wasn’t the cause of the division in Israel. God is using Rehoboam’s immaturity to accomplish His upper story plan.

Well, as this part of the Bible is coming to an end, the director wants us to have a theme that grabs us and causes us to think about our real lives. The director wants you to be captivated by what this means in your life. I think there are 2 main themes running simultaneously.

1. The Upper Story Theme: The theme is that God has a plan, and that plan cannot be thwarted. And God always keeps His promises. God promised to use the nation of Israel, and Israel was supposed to reveal God and bring Jesus to us; who would be the ultimate One to forgive our sins. To give every single one of us who was separated from God, an opportunity to come into an eternal relationship with the one true God, through Jesus Christ – who came from the tribe of Judah.

He does not have to use everyone in Israel. And what we see here is the unfolding of God’s decision to use a remnant of Israel to keep His promises. It appears that Jeroboam is the good guy. He rallies around the cries of the people and comes to their aid because they were being overtaxed, over-burdened and over-worked. He uses the cries of the people to gain an entrance into leadership and it looked like he’s the savior of the day. He has 10 tribes and it looks like God is removing Rehoboam and his family from the line of leadership in the nation. But that’s not what was happening at all. It turns out that God was shrinking the remnant whom He would use. And it turns out that Jeroboam is a bad guy. When he thought the people might head back to Jerusalem to worship, he had two golden calves built and told the people to worship these. This way they would not have to go back to his rival.

But, it’s through the remnant of Judah that God will bring us Jesus.

2. The Lower Story Theme: The lower story theme and I will close with this, is that there’s a ripple effect from all of our decisions. Just like when we drop a pebble in still water, we see the ripples. And so it is with our lives and the decisions we make, and the stakes go up when you’re the leader because of the number of people who are brought into the good and bad decisions you make.

We saw the negative impact of the decisions Solomon made. It impacted his son and it impacted the entire nation all because this wise man made many unwise decisions. We also learned that we don’t use people to build authority; we use authority to build people.

Chart of Leadership

 

The author of Kings evaluated each king based upon his relationship to the Covenant of the Law. Israel had the revealed word of God and therefore the revealed will of God. Solomon, Rehoboam, Jeroboam, and the other kings should know the Law of the LORD. Anticipating the coming kings, Moses’ Law prescribed the limitations and responsibilities within which each king was to live. The first thing the king was to do when he ascended to the throne was to write a copy of the Law for himself under the supervision of the priests (Deuteronomy 17:14-20). He would therefore have no excuses: the king was accountable to God. The Law made two things extremely clear: (1) the Israelites’ occupancy of the Promised Land depended on their obedience to the Law; (2) God would not tolerate His people worshiping other gods. This chapter precedes the coming Exile—Israel’s captivity to Assyria and Judah’s captivity to Babylon. But it teaches the captives—and us—that God is extremely patient but will fulfill His words.  

It is often asserted that all sin is sin and therefore one sin is not lesser or greater than another. That is true to some degree; all sin separates us from God. Yet it is not true in the practical sense of consequences. The abrogation of God’s Laws carried various degrees of penalties, teaching us that some are more serious transgressions than others. God is just. Of all the sins of Israel, the one sin that God consistently judged throughout the book of Judges and now through the period of the Kings is idolatry. It is idolatry—the rejection of YHWH and the embracing of other gods—that drove Israel and Judah into captivity. In God’s economy, it would seem that idolatry is the single most heinous sin in the Book.



The argument could be made that all other sins are borne out of idolatry. Dr. J. Bingham wrote, “A thoughtless and uninformed theology grips and guides our life with just as much force as does a thoughtful and informed one.” Certainly kings of Israel and Judah bear out this truth. What one believes about God will inevitably shape one’s life. The success or failure of each king was determined by his relationship to God. Just as God intended, the nation of Israel prospered in direct proportion to the king’s faithfulness. When the king was unfaithful, Israel did not experience God’s full blessing. The exiled Israelites—and we—can learn from these failures and choose obedience to the True God instead. Indeed, Who or what one worships determines one’s way of life.




Applications and Implications in Our Life

1. I will learn from the mistakes of the kings in Israel and Judah and not turn away from God.
2. What I believe about God will affect the way I live my life. Therefore, I want to know Him better as He reveals Himself in the Scriptures.
3. I will not let other religious beliefs creep into my understanding of Who God is.
4. Greed is idolatry. Therefore, I will become more self-aware of covetousness in my own life, repent of it and receive God’s cleansing.
5. I will correct Christians who are deceived about the exclusivity of faith in Jesus Christ for eternal life.
6. My personal life reflects what I really believe about God.
7. God is jealous and will not tolerate idolatry indefinitely. He will judge it.
8. I will prayerfully ask God to reveal to me any idols in my life that I put before my devotion to Him. 
9. The worldly accomplishments of the kings were not the grounds for God’s evaluation of them. Their heart relationship to Him was the only thing that really mattered. I will align my priorities to reflect this truth.

Devotional:

Molded by the Master

Read | Jeremiah 18:1-6

If you have ever watched a potter work, as Jeremiah did in this passage, you know the wonder of seeing a lovely vessel take shape from a lump of clay. God’s object lesson to the prophet was that the nation of Israel—as well as every person from the beginning of time—was to be shaped by His hand. We are all lumps of human clay waiting for the touch of the master Potter.

When clay is placed on the wheel, the potter already has a specific design in mind. The same is true of us—God has determined how He plans to work in our life and what part we are to play in building His kingdom (Eph. 2:10). He shapes with His hands and cuts with His tools so that our character begins to look like that of His Son Jesus. Each believer will be formed differently to carry out the unique service God has in mind for him or her. But regardless of our special equipping, we all bear the unmistakable imprint of our Potter.

Too often we look around at the talents and abilities of others and wish to be more like someone else. But we have been perfectly designed for the purposes God has for us, and He makes no mistakes. If we spend our time wishing for talents that do not suit God’s plan, or if we refuse to use the spiritual gifts He’s given us, we waste His effort and our opportunity to serve Him.

The Master is pleased with the way that He has designed our life and the abilities He’s poured into us. To honor the Potter as a vessel should, we must submit to being molded and used as He desires.

Lesson outline this week:

 

Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit

Many of you remember singer-songwriter John Denver. In the 70’s and 80’s he was very popular with his combination folk-country tunes that included “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Sunshine on my Shoulders,” and “Rocky Mountain High.” The world was saddened 18 years ago when the single-engine plane he was piloting crashed just off the Pacific Coast and he was killed on impact. But what’s even sadder is that his death was both hastened and avoidable. In fact, some have called John Denver’s mishap “an accident waiting to happen.” One person went even further and said that in a way, John Denver’s death was a suicide.
The final paragraph of the official inquiry into the crash by the NTSB reads:

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause of this accident was the pilot’s diversion of attention from the operation of the airplane and his inadvertent application of right rudder that resulted in the loss of airplane control while attempting to manipulate the fuel selector handle. Also, the Board determines that the pilot’s inadequate preflight planning and preparations, specifically his failure to refuel the airplane, was causal. The Board determines that the builder’s decision to locate the unmarked fuel selector handle in a hard-to-access position, unmarked fuel quantity sight gauges, inadequate transition training by the pilot, and his lack of total experience in this type of airplane were factors in this accident. 

 
Listen again to the causal list in the report:

• Pilot’s diversion of attention from the operation of the airplane
• Inadequate pre-flight planning
• Failure to refuel the airplane
• Inadequate training by the pilot
• His lack of experience in this type of airplane

The Air Force had a saying they frequently used while they were debriefing flight incidents:

“The mishap has already occurred; the aircraft is now simply proceeding to the crash site.”

In other words, there are certain actions a pilot or aircrew perform, or do not perform, which make an aircraft mishap simply a matter of time. 

  And so, it seems an appropriate question for us to ask as we begin a new year:

Where are you proceeding?

John Denver’s habitual pattern of cutting corners, failure to plan, and diverting his attention from what he was doing was an eventual recipe for disaster.


As long as he kept flying with those habits, and without the necessary training, it was fairly certain that sooner or later his plane would arrive not on a runway, but at an accident site.


Even small, seemingly insignificant deviations from true north, over time, set us on a path that can eventually become unrecoverable. Here’s what I mean…


If you’ll remember our study last week of Solomon in Chapter 13, God’s instructions to keep the nation of Israel flying level and full of fuel were clear. Look at page 188-89 of The Story.


There’s the flight manual. Now, look how Solomon piloted his kingdom: page 191-192


An ongoing accumulation of bad habits doomed both John Denver and Solomon. By the time we get to Chapter 14, we can rephrase the Air Force saying and say,

The sin had already occurred. Israel was simply proceeding to the crash site.

Our lesson this morning is on leadership and what many believe is the biggest issue facing the church and the family today. Since The Story began, we have studied leadership in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Joshua, and Saul. These were also pilots of their families and their nation – the same as you are the pilot of your family and those you influence.


And what happens in Chapter 14 of The Story is, more than anything else, caused by pilot error. The primary aviators at the wheel are Solomon, Rehoboam, and Jeroboam, plus a host of kings that made bad choices after them.


And what we will see is that because of Solomon’s disobedience, Israel began a tailspin that was unrecoverable, even after Jeroboam and Rehoboam followed him.


This chapter is all about leadership—so this chapter is all about you and me, because every one of us is a leader, like it or not. All of us are influencers in our families, our companies, our schools, our neighborhoods, and our church.


Let’s look at examples of leadership in Chapter 14 of The Story—we call our study this morning, “Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit.”



Takeaways:

 
1. Rehoboam: Bad leaders are insecure.

When faced with a decision to show grace as a leader, to serve his kingdom rather than have his kingdom serve his own ego, Rehoboam chose the latter. Leaders who rule by intimidation and domination aren’t leaders at all: their hunger for approval can never be satisfied, so they demand capitulation. I’ve worked for people like that and I’m sure you have too.


Insecure leaders are men who:

• Always have something to prove
• Never got attention/approval from father figures
• Afraid they don’t measure up
• Won’t deal with their baggage
• Always throws up a smoke screen, an excuse
• Driven by shortcomings, not strengths

And so our lesson from Rehoboam is to leave your insecurities behind so that you do not castigate your wife, your employees, or anyone under your charge. Doing so, only hastens your arrival at the crash site.




2. Bad leadership promotes division.

Solomon piloted his plane into treacherous airspace by giving in to the pagan worship of many of his wives, instead of keeping God on the throne. His loyalties were divided, so the split between the Northern and Southern kingdoms was a natural consequence of flying in the enemy territory. If they couldn’t agree on the same God, how could they possibly hope to be unified in any other way? There is a reason the first two of the Ten Commandments deal specifically with no other gods and no graven images. There is a reason Jesus spent the entirety of John 17 in prayer for unity. There is a reason Paul and Peter spent so much of their ink on recognizing false prophets. It is because as leaders of Christ’s church and of our families, the worst thing we can do is be lukewarm or straddle the fence.


Listen: if your loyalties are split in any way, if God only shares the throne in your heart and in your home, then divisiveness becomes a way of life under your roof. Bad leadership promotes division because if Jesus is just Savior and not also Lord, then at home your children are faced with an irreconcilable dilemma: trying to make sense of what they hear at church and a materialistic lifestyle or bad language or anger management issues at home.


Bad leadership promotes division because we refuse to forgive past grievances of family members, just like Jeroboam and Rehoboam. On page 199 of The Story, it says:

There was continual warfare between Rehoboam and Jeroboam.

And two paragraphs later: 

There was war between Abijah and Jeroboam throughout Abijah’s lifetime.

Solomon’s problem became Rehoboam’s problem, which became Abijah’s problem. But the whole time, because these guys were the pilots, it was also Israel’s problem. The whole country suffered because of these bad leaders, just like many of your families suffered growing up because of bad leadership. If you and I are not peacemakers, how will our kids learn any other way? Bad leadership promotes division because when fathers and husbands and CEOs and captains and managers and pilots can’t resolve issues, who will model godly leadership for the followers?



3. Jeroboam: Bad leadership originates in fear.

The most common leadership disease we’ve seen so far in Aaron, Jacob, Gideon, Saul, and all the rest is fear. And now, once again in Chapter 14, we see the skeletal remains of fear-based leadership. Out of fear of a loss of control, Jeroboam built shrines for people to worship, because he cared more for his ego than for his people. Look again at the last phrase in that section:

Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.

Does this sound familiar at all? Do you remember who said those exact words at the base of Mt. Sinai while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments? Aaron! Out of fear, Jeroboam managed to quote Aaron verbatim. He quoted a man who was also driven by fear because the people were getting restless about Moses’ absence.


In the strongest terms I can say, let me encourage you to never, ever lead from fear. Fear will shred a man’s senses and put him on a downward spiral that can become unrecoverable. Consider the crash of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s airplane in 1999. In that accident, the NTSB determined that the probable cause was Kennedy’s failure to maintain control of the plane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of “spatial disorientation.” Translation: he didn’t trust his instruments. He was overcome by fear. 


And there’s your Equipping Point for today: Never stop trusting your instruments.


What are your instruments today?

• There will always be times when you don’t see the horizon—when you can’t tell up from down—when the enemy has confused you in the darkness. Never forget there are anchors you can always depend on: the love of God, the promises of His word, the presence of His Spirit, and the support of your brothers here.
• All of us go through “spiritual disorientation”—and the way to stay solid in your leadership is to remember to trust your instruments.

4. Jeroboam: Bad leadership always involves deception.

Is there any deception in your life? By that I don’t just mean getting caught in a bald-faced lie. I mean this:

• Have you asked anyone to shade the truth for you recently?
• Do you habitually tell only part of the truth?

So let me ask again: Where are you proceeding to?

• Some people are playing with fire—they understand they are playing both ends against the middle, that they’re trying to live their lives so that this part is unaware of a different part, a sinful part, a part that would collapse their world and crash their plane if anyone found out. But, as the saying goes, their aircraft is simply proceeding to the crash site.
• This is a new year. You may have made some good resolutions already. What we’ve discussed this morning is so much more important. This whole year it’s all about taking the responsibility of leading your family, your employees, and anyone you influence well.
• If everything we’ve said today hasn’t been enough, consider the last Scripture on your outline: “He will abandon Israel because Jeroboam sinned and made all of Israel sin along with him.” 1 Kings 14:16

Such is the tremendous responsibility on the shoulders of a leader.

• If that doesn’t sober you up, nothing will. Your influence is unstoppable. Whether we like it or not, as leaders in our families, our companies, our communities, and our churches, wherever we go, they go.
• You may remember in Chapter 10 that Eli the High Priest was judged because his sons, both priests themselves, were abusing their position and seducing women at the entrance to the Temple. That’s not even an old story—we’ve heard a lot about priests and seduction in the last several years haven’t we? The Bible says God will judge not just the perpetrators, but the leaders over them. One of the greatest burdens of leadership is that we will be judged by God because of sin we know about but fail to restrain.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! In the leadership roles God has given every person in this room, in 2015, we can take those who follow us to new heights of trust and faith in an unstable world. Where you go, they will go.

• If you’ve been flying recklessly, use this time of new resolutions to stop and think: where are you proceeding? Are you fueled by the Holy Spirit, or has it been a while since you checked the tanks? Are you playing with fire and singeing your family in the process?
• My prayer is that you will trust your instruments.

Be sure to read this week's pages of The Story. Looking forward to the New Year and what God has in store for each of our lives! Make it your resolution for 2015 to start and finish well. Hope to see you this Sunday!


In His Everlasting Love,


David & Susan