Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 167. We are gonna cover three chapters of biblical text. Today we're gonna go through 1 Kings, chapter 12, 13 and 14. So 1 Kings 12:14. If you have already done the reading, shout out to you. Good job. If you haven't done the reading, pause the video, stop the audio. Don't listen, don't watch. This is not designed to replace your Bible reading. It's designed to be a supplement to your Bible reading. So hopeful context clues, the nerdy nuggets, and the timeless truth from today add value to the time where you got to hear from God. The goal is to hear from the Lord. Before you watch this, before you listen to this, we believe the Bible's good for you. So you want to read 1 Kings, chapter 1214. Let's dive in. All right, we now officially have a divided monarchy. And so we're going to get overviews of the kingships of two kings, okay, Rehoboam and Jeroboam. Now it's very, very easy to confuse Rehoboam and Jeroboam. I don't know how I keep them straight. I wish I could give you a nice little, I don't know, tool, but Rehoboam is Solomon's son. Okay, so Rehoboam is governing in the south in Judah, and Jehoboam is governing in the north, is the king of the north. So these chapters are going to just follow the king, the first kings of a divided monarchy. Jeroboam in the north, Rehoboam in the south. Okay, so let's start at chapter 12. I'll give you some context for what's happening. Obviously the big, big, big context is that Solomon has sinned against the Lord. He sinned against the Lord with idolatry. He sinned against the Lord with a divided heart. He sinned against God with amassing wealth. He sinned against God by going against the book of Deuteronomy and the outline that Deuteronomy gives for what a godly king is supposed to be. So he sinned against the Lord and God is tearing the kingdom of Israel out from Solomon and his descendants power and leaving them with, with just Judah. And so that's the broader context for why we're even in this scenario in the first place. And we'll kind of get into more specific context. But chapter 12, verse one says this. Rehoboam. So Rehoboam is Solomon's son, is now gonna become king. Okay? But there's gonna be tension because, remember, at the end of yesterday, Jeroboam had fled to Egypt, okay? So Jeroboam has fled to Egypt. He's gonna be the ruler in the north. So what does Rehoboam do? Rehoboam, Solomon's son, goes to Shechem. Now, this is huge because where's Shechem? Shechem's all the way up in the north, okay? So Rehoboam knows these northern tribes are going to secede from the Union because if there's gonna be a civil war, they're gonna try to peace out, you know, and so let me go have my inauguration up in the north. Well, there's been tension building between the north and the south for a long time. I don't know if you can remember when David is in exile, he's treating Judah favorably, okay? When he comes back from, you know, from Joab killing Absalom, it's Judah that accepts him as king first. And so there's been this slow decline of Judah being treated favorably by David and by Solomon. So we've got all that context. So Rehoboam goes all the way up to the north, because I would imagine he's probably thinking to himself, you know, let me go visit. Like, imagine, you know, if there's a presidential election, you know, a president essentially going to a state that didn't vote for him, right? That. That would be like a Republican president going to a blue state or a Democratic president going to a red state. That's what's happening. Rehoboam is going all the way up to the north to Shechem to be installed as king, okay? So for all Israel had gone there to make him king, okay? When Jeroboam heard this, he was still in Egypt. He returned from Egypt. So he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, nah, bro. I'm coming back to claim what's rightfully mine, okay? So they sent for Jeroboam, and he and the whole assembly of Israel went to Rehoboam and said to him, your father put a heavy yoke on us. Now your father's Solomon. And so remember, Solomon's got forced labor, he's got taxes. And so we start to see the ramifications of Solomon's wealth hoarding, chariot hoarding, horse hoarding. Like, hey, all's great at the palace where Queen Sheba is visiting, but you got all these people up in the north who are really upset. So what do they say? 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. So Rehabam can avoid civil war with one decision. And what does he do instead of consulting the elders? Well, he does consult the elders. He just didn't listen to them. Instead of listening to the elders that he had consulted? Nope. He listens to the young guys in his life, his young friends. Says this in verse 8 of chapter 12. But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him. Terrible. Who you listen to will determine your life. Seriously, advice is guidance. And if you let people guide you in the wrong direction, people's advice can completely derail your life. So he rejects the advice of the elders, which is what? What's the advice of the elders? Hey, listen to the people, man. Your dad was a lot. Your dad amassed a bunch of wealth. And here's another just nugget that we can take from this. We're not at nerdy nuggets yet, but I'm gonna give you some nuggets really quick. What we see when David transitions power to his son, Solomon, is he gives him some advice. Like, there's dialogue, there's relationship, there's advice. Rehoboam gets no advice from his father, Solomon. When we transition power from David to Solomon, even though it's like, hey, kill this person, kill that person, kill that person. David is still, like, leaving his son some kind of legacy. Hey, build the temple, do this, Kill Joab. You know, Rehoboam takes power, and what does he have? The only thing he has is the wealth that his father's left him. No instructions, no legacy, no. No advice, no. And so when you leave more to children than you leave in them, they will squander everything you leave to them. Okay, so real legacy is not what you leave to them. It's what you leave deposited in them. And if you don't leave anything substantial in them, they will squander what you leave to them. And we're going to see that by the end of the story, all those gold shields that the text tells us about that Solomon has are going to get turned into bronze shields, which tells us that because Solomon doesn't leave any Anything in Rehoboam, even the stuff that he left to Rehoboam, is going to fade, okay? Because it is only what you leave to someone that has the ability to sustain what you leave. What you leave in someone is the only thing that has the ability to sustain what you leave to someone. Family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. Now let's transition to Nerdy Nuggets, okay? Cause this first one's quite funny. Okay? So he rejects the advice of the old, of the older, of the elders. He takes the advice of the young guys, which is, hey, you know 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. My father laid on you a heavy yoke. I'll make it heavier. My father scourged you with whips. I will scourge you with scorpions. So he's like, look, not only am I gonna do exactly what my dad did, I'm gonna make it worse. Now, this is some sexual euphemism here, okay? This phrase, my little finger is thicker than my father's waist. The word here really shouldn't be waste. The word here is more like loins. Like, he's. He's making a statement about his dad's genitalia, okay? He's like, my little finger is thicker than my dad's bleep, okay? And let's just deal with the fact that that's in the Bible, okay? That's in the Bible not because God's crude. That's in the Bible because that's what was said, okay? And so the picture that's being painted of Rehoboam right at the jump is of an obnoxious, spoiled brat with no tact and no wisdom on who to take advice from. Uh. Cause the beginning of wisdom is not to have wisdom. The beginning of wisdom is to know who to even get wisdom from. And so he's getting wisdom from idiots instead of the older guys that served his dad. All right, okay. Now the king doesn't listen, but then verse 15 of chapter 12. So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the Lord. And here's where I'm gonna plant the seed for our timeless truth. Are people just doing what people would do? Yeah, they're acting like themselves. But is it also the sovereign hand of God? Yeah. And I think for a Western person, we would ask, well, is this Arminianism or Calvinism? And a good Jew would say both. Like, we live in a world where it has to either be human free will or the sovereignty of God. But an Eastern perspective is that it is both human free will and the sovereignty of God. And you can see it right here in this verse. People are acting in character. They're not acting out of character. They're acting like themselves. However, this turn of events is from the Lord to fulfill the word that the Lord has spoken to Jeroboam through Abijah the Shilonite. Okay, so now we're going to see an official split, and Israel is going to rebel against Judah. And what is Rehoboam gonna do? He's going, hey, Adoniram. Remember we learned about him a couple days ago? He's over all the forced labor. He's gonna try to send Adoniram up there to whip these guys into shape. They're like, we on strike. If you're not. If your freaking pinky fingers thicker than your dad's loins, bro, we strike. We're picketing. And so Rehoboam sends Adoniram up there to whip him into shape. And what do they do? All Israel stoned him to death. Now, I want you to see the irony. What did Solomon do? He used forced labor to build the stones of the temple and most likely the stones of his palace as well. And now this is contrapasso. This is poetic justice. They are now using stones to stone the person who forced them into building things with stones. Okay, so clearly you got to read in between the lines in verse 18. Rehoboam is now going to go up there to try to fight these rebels, but somehow he manages to turn around and go back to Jerusalem. So all Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day. So there we go. Official split. Israel in the north, house of David, AKA tribe of Judah and Benjamin in the south. Okay? North, south, officially split. When all Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel minus Judah and Benjamin. Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David. I feel like the tribe of Benjamin also probably remain loyal to the house of David, but that's not a shock because David is from the tribe of Judah. Okay, and why do I think that Benjamin is included in this? Because of what we get at verse 23, Seda Rehoboam, son of Solomon, king of Judah, to all Judah and Benjamin and to the rest of the people, okay? God sends a word. Hey, do not go fight against your brothers. Do not engage in civil war. And honestly, to Rehoboam's, this is good. I mean, he obeys the voice of the Lord. The voice of the Lord says, do not go and fight your brothers. Do not engage in civil war. And he doesn't. So this is the first positive thing that we see from Rehoboam the entire time. Now, Jeroboam is about. So Jeroboam fortified Shechem. So we already saw Shechem at the beginning of the chapter. We're going to now see Shechem again. Why is Jeroboam and Shechem? Because Shechem's in the north. And so what does he do? He makes Shechem the capital of the northern nation of Israel. Okay. And then he's going to set up golden calves in Bethel and in Dan. These are convenient locations. Dan is all the way up in the north. Bethel is actually north of Jerusalem. So for Israel, it would be in the south, but it's obviously north of Judah. So he puts two convenient locations for people to go sacrifice. And he appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites. So this is terrible. Okay? They built shrines and high places. And why he doesn't want people to go to Jerusalem? Because now Jerusalem is another country. It's like north and South Korea, okay? Jerusalem is in Judah, which is another country with a different king, okay? He doesn't want the people of Israel to go down to Judah, to go to the temple in Jerusalem to worship God. So the creation of false worship stems from what? The transition from a tabernacle to a temple. Okay? If there was still a tabernacle, guess what? The tabernacle could visit all 12 tribes. But because there's a permanent temple. Now we have idolatry that is going to be proliferated through the land because Jeroboam has political fear. He thinks if people keep going down to Jerusalem, they're going to be loyal to Rehoboam. I need them to be loyal to me, Jeroboam. So we'll set up golden calves, which is. Should immediately make us think of Exodus, okay? The golden calves from Exodus. Last Little Tidbit, verse 32, chapter 12. He instituted a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. This is essentially a faux Passover. That is about a month after Passover. And he just picks a random day to just have a fake Passover, okay? Which is absolutely ridiculous. And the Bible says 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 on the 15th day of the eighth month, a month of his own choosing. That's the Bible saying this is just his own feast. Okay? He offered sacrifice on the altar he had built at Bethel. So he instituted a festival for the Israelites that is not a biblical festival and went up to the altar to make offerings. We're gonna see this exact problem played out in a discussion between the woman at the well and Jesus in John chapter four. Okay, when we get that. Yeah, that's John chapter four. John chapter four. We're gonna get a conversation between Jesus and a woman at the well, and she's gonna be asking questions about this, okay? The woman is a Samaritan, which means she's a descendant of the northern tribes of Israel. What happens is the Assyrians take the northern tribes into captivity, and what they're going to do is they're going. The Assyrians had a different way of doing exile than the Babylonians. The Assyrians took people from all over their empire, just threw them in a blender and relocated everybody to everywhere. Okay? So now Israel's full of all types of people from everywhere. The Israelites that stayed in the land and are married with those people from all over, and they create, you know. Well, I was about to say they create. My wife likes Harry Potter. So I was going to say they create Muggles or mud bloods. They. They create people who are half Jewish and half not okay? And those are going to become Samaritans. So when we get to John chapter four, the context for John chapter four is right here, okay? The beginning of Jerusalem not being the proper place of worship, but somewhere else. And you can almost hear compassion in Jesus's Voice around where people should worship. Because for Jesus, I don't think Jesus believes that Jerusalem is the only place to worship. You can hear that. It's not like Jesus is saying, hey, like Jerusalem is actually the only place to worship. Actually, he's saying, we worship in spirit and in truth. But that's a whole nother discussion for a whole nother day. Couple more nerdy nuggets, we're going to get this whole deal about two prophets, a false prophet and a real prophet in chapter 13. And the false prophet is going to trick the real prophet. And if you've read this whole thing, then you realize that the real prophet ends up dying because he disobeys the voice of the Lord because he's been tricked by a false prophet. So the beginning. So two things to kind of understand what's going on. He gives a. The real prophet gives a prophetic word against the false worship that's happening. So here's the cool thing. The word of the Lord came to a man of God. Here's another little nerdy nugget you need to remember. Man of God and prophet are synonymous terms. Those things mean the same thing. Man of God doesn't mean priest. Man of God doesn't mean king. Man of God doesn't mean pastor. A man of God. And the Bible means prophet. Okay, man of God is a prophet. Next, he comes from Judah to Bethel. So he is immigrating from Judah up to Bethel to the southern idolatrous shrine that Jeroboam has set up. He prophesies that human bones are going to be burned on the altar that Jeroboam has set up. Jeroboam goes to, like, essentially moves his hand and says, seize him. And the sign, because a sign has to accompany a prophetic word to prove that the prophet is legitimate. The sign is that the man's hand shrivels up, not the man's hand. Jeroboam's hand shrivels up. In ancient cultures, your right hand is the sign of authority and strength. And if you're a king, that's the hand that the scepter goes in. If you're a judge, that's the hand that you use for the gavel. Okay? So he stretches out his hand, and the Lord miraculously shrivels his hand up. But here's the mercy of God. He prays. He asked the prophet to pray so that this can be undone. And God relents and he unshrivels the man's hand or the king's hand, and he's healed. Jeroboam doesn't repent. Jeroboam doesn't vow to stop practicing idolatry. God's just kind. God is just kind. And he's merciful and he's loving. So he unshrivels Jeroboam's hand. Okay, remember, though, that the prophecy is that human bones are gonna get burnt on this altar. So while the man's leaving, also, Jeroboam now wants to have a covenant meal. In the Bible, meals and covenants go together. So Jeroboam's not just asking to eat with the guy, he wants to have covenant with the guy. This is the same as Saul and the witch of Endor. Them eating together is them sharing a covenant meal. So he refuses. He's like, nope, the Lord told me not to eat with anybody. But while he's going back, a false prophet tricks him into eating with him. And because he eats with him, God sends a lion to the real prophet. And the real prophet gets mauled by a lion, dies, and the lion doesn't eat the donkey, which he should be eating because it's a miraculous sign of God. And what does the false prophet do? The false prophet goes and gets the man, has him buried in the false prophet's tomb. Why? And then he tells his sons, when I die, put my bones next to this prophet's bones. What is he trying to do? He's trying to escape the judgment that the prophet spoke at the beginning of the story, that bones will be burned on this altar. The false prophet didn't want his bones to be burned on that altar, so he had this whole elaborate scheme to get the real prophet killed so that he could get his bones and bury his bones with him and then tell his sons to bury his bones with the real prophet's bones to save his bones when the real prophet's prophecy comes to fruition at some point in the future. That's a lot to escape some punishment to get some whole elaborate scheme to get a prophet killed so that you can get his bones so that you can bury your bones next to his bones. That's a lot, bro. Now, what in the world's going on? Why is that here? I'll tell you exactly why that's here. The Book of Judges shows you by the end of the book, there's Levites that are corrupt, so that means the priesthood is corrupt. And then through Samuel and Kings, you start to see that the kings are corrupt. And now we're starting to see that the prophets are corrupt because a Couple days ago, I told you, the Book of Kings is not just about kings. It's not just about why the people are in exile. It's about the prophets. So we're gonna start to see the rise of Elijah and Elisha, and we're gonna. The role of the prophets is gonna be very, very important. And so priests have failed, kings have failed, and now prophets are failing. This is not good. The Bible's actually painting a picture that is very, very, very, very, very bad. Very bleak. Okay. All right, Thomas. Truth is that free will and the sovereignty of God are both always at play. This is a tension to manage, and this is not a problem to solve. We are going to see the. The actions of real people, but the sovereignty of God working and weaving itself into the lives of real people acting like themselves and doing what they would naturally normally do. And for the Western person, that's really hard. For the Eastern person, they just don't think in terms of either ors, but in both ends and in our lives, we should be thinking in terms of my free will and the sovereignty of God together, working as a team. That's my timeless truth for the day. I hope this was a value add. I'll see you here tomorrow for day one of the 68 as we continue our trek through First Kings. I love you. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free, free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.