Talk 8 - How not to maintain loyalty to the King

0:00 Well, we are back this morning to the increasingly chaotic legacy of King Solomon. If you've been following along, you'll remember that his son Rehoboam succeeded him as king over all the tribes of Israel, but he didn't listen to the justifiable complaints that the people had about his father's harsh treatment of them, and he decided to make it even harder. And as a result, the kingdom split into two, with 10 tribes going their separate way and making Jeroboam their king, just as God had foretold. So Jeroboam can't be blamed then for taking this role because it was God who gave it to him. But how did he get on with it? So let's read now from 1 Kings chapter 12, and we're going to read from verse 25 to verse 33. Then Jeroboam fortified Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there, and from there he went out and built up Peniel. Jeroboam thought to himself, the kingdom is now likely to revert to the house of David.

1:29 If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their Lord, Rehoboam, king of Judah. They will kill me and returned to King Rehoboam. After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves, and he said to the people, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. And one he set up in Bethel and the other in Dan, and this thing became a sin. The people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other. Jeroboam built shrines and high places and appointed priests from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites. He instituted a festival on the 15th day of the eighth month, like the festival held in Judah and offered sacrifices on the altar.

2:35 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. And on the 15th day of the eighth month, the month of his own choosing, he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built at Bethel. So he instituted the festival for the Israelites and went up to the altar to make offerings. His first actions seemed to be very sensible. They were to increase security in his part of the now divided kingdom. Just in case King Rehoboam would renew his attempts to unify the nation by force, that's where we ended up, where he almost caused civil war, trying to bring the nation back together. But he had a real concern.

3:40 Building up the security was one thing, but he kept looking over his shoulder at what was going on in Jerusalem, in Judah under Rehoboam, concerned about what would happen next. and he saw a particular vulnerability because there was only one temple. So all the people would go up to offer sacrifices at the one temple, and that one temple happened to be in Jerusalem. And guess who was king in Jerusalem? It was Rehoboam. So that was the problem. If people were constantly going up to Jerusalem where King Rehoboam was in charge, he felt that they would gradually shift their loyalty away from him, Jeroboam, and back to Rehoboam, and he would end up losing not only his position, but his own life. So there's the question then, raised by the story itself.

4:48 How do you keep people's loyalty? and it's a huge question it's a big question at the minute with the elections both in this country and in the U.S. that the people in power are concerned about how do they keep how do they get the votes how do they keep the loyalty what other promise do they have to make to swing the election in their direction so political leaders have that concern business leaders also have that concern? How do you keep the loyalty of your customers or your staff? Celebrities have that concern. What do we next need to post on Facebook or TikTok in order to increase or at least retain the supporters? What other shocking thing do I have to do today to get more and more people following me. And that issue also is a lively issue when it comes to the church and to church leaders.

5:52 How do you keep loyalty? No church leader likes to see people walking away. And often church leaders will take lots of time to try to think, are there things we need to do? Are there things we need to tweak? the things we need to change to make it more palatable to people, to make it more attractive to people, to retain the loyalty of the people. And the problem there is that once you go too far down that line, it raises the question of loyalty to whom or to what? Whose loyalty are you trying to get, is it loyalty to me as a preacher, or is it loyalty to Christ? Now, those two things aren't mutually exclusive, but they are different, and we mustn't mistake the two.

6:46 Loyalty to Christ, that's one thing. Loyalty to an institution, to an individual, well, that's another. And very subtly what can happen is that it's the loyalty to the institution or the individual that takes precedence over loyalty to Christ. And you need to hold me accountable for that. Because my job as a teacher is to promote loyalty to Jesus Christ, not to gain followers for myself. But this is a very subtle thing, especially in the world that we live in today. So that's the concern. That's the issue.

7:33 And Jeroboam, like Rehoboam before him, took advice. But he came up with a very different strategy from Rehoboam. He made two golden calves and he said to the people, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you out of the land of Egypt. So he made two golden calves. Does that sound familiar? You'll see a slide, a picture appear on the screen. Do you remember the incident?

8:07 This had been done before. Back in the day when the nation had just come out of Egypt, Moses had gone to meet with God. And in his absence, the people began to get restless. And they started murmuring about electing new leaders to bring them back to Egypt. How do you keep the people? And Aaron, the high priest, was concerned about this. So he asked the people to donate their golden earrings. They got lots of golden earrings when they were going out of Egypt.

8:40 And he put them in a furnace. And according to Aaron, hey presto, they came out as a golden calf. Imagine, with no human intervention. Well, that was the myth that he put around. And he told the people, these are your gods that brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And of course, they got up and celebrated and danced and played and had great fun until Moses came back down and spied the party. But the thing had been done before. And it was a complete calm.

9:17 It was a marketing trick to keep the people. You can see the thinking behind it. You've got to give people something to get excited about now instead of waiting for this invisible Moses to return something visual and physical that appeals to the senses, music, dancing, drink, food, fun. Don't worry about the facts. Don't worry about what God's word said. And Jeroboam borrowed from Aaron's playbook. And notice how he sold it to them. Listen again.

9:54 It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is too far. I mean, I don't think God would expect you to have to keep going to the temple in Jerusalem, especially when that tarant Rehoboam rules there. Stay with me. I'll make things easier for you. Just stay here. Don't go to Jerusalem. I'll lighten the load.

10:29 This is the opposite strategy to Rehoboam, who made things harder, made the load heavier, and in doing that he completely misrepresented God's rule and God's character. Now Jeroboam is going the opposite way. And I can understand the reaction. For example, here in Northern Ireland, many people have suffered under a heavy burden of the Rehoboam type. unbiblical legalism in churches. Rules, regulations, keeping up appearances, constantly told how guilty you are and how far short you fall, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and adding traditions and also piling it up, making life, spiritually speaking, and often emotionally as well, impossible. But what then can happen? is that instead of abandoning that kind of religious legalism and returning to what Jesus says, people abandon both.

11:53 They're tired of all the man-made rules, the constant judging by appearances, the petty-mindedness, the lack of grace and joy. And so they just set aside God's word and they settle for a kind of false ease of doing what feels good to them. And again, I sympathize because legalism, religious legalism is deeply damaging. It completely misrepresents God. It misrepresents the gospel. It produces great negativity, overburdened consciousness, Consciences, joylessness, spiritual bondage, damaged emotions. But to go the other way, to remove anything that might mean effort, endurance, sacrifice, to downplay or simply ignore Christ's call to deny self and take up our cross. That's also to completely misrepresent God and his rule.

13:03 Now let's look at three key things that Jeroboam did as part of this new strategy and appeal. First, he built alternative shrines, both in Bethel and in the north, in Dan, and he put a golden calf in each. In other words, he created alternative spiritual headquarters, if you like, spiritual centers that he controlled that meant that the people didn't have to go to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. That's the first thing. Brilliantly practical, but completely in defiance of God's clear instruction that there was to be only one house of the Lord. That's the first thing. Second, he set up alternative priesthood. Again, very practical, because if you've got new headquarters, you're going to have to staff them.

14:04 If you've got new shrines and places of worship, you're going to get priests in to lead the people in their worship. And he got people from anywhere and anywhere, really. He doesn't seem to have too much in terms of trying to check out their character or their theology. As long as they had a pulse and were willing, off they went. Practical, but again, completely against what God had said. He had no authority from God to do so. And then what he did, thirdly, he instituted a new festival, a new religious festival. Again, another practical solution, because people need to do something.

14:45 And they can't go to Jerusalem. Now, at least he's telling them not to go there. You create an exciting alternative. He modeled it on the God-given Feast of the Tabernacles, but he deliberately changed the date to a date of his choosing. And it involved, of course, now sacrifices to your golden calf. So you put those things together, an alternative headquarters, an alternative priesthood, alternative feasts and sacrifices, worth thinking about that.

15:26 I haven't time to go into all possible applications, but it is interesting that this is the way, if you like, of progressive religion, kind of moving on. We're doing our own thing. And we're changing things. We're adding things. Yeah, we're going against God's word, but sure, that was then. This is now. I mean, you need new ideas for a new culture. So let's just leave all that stuff behind and do our own thing.

16:00 Still talk about God. We're still worshiping God, of course. He wasn't worshiping Moloch at this point, or Baal at this point. That was going to happen later. It was still the God language. But he had changed it. And it's interesting, if you look at church history, you'll see this trend all the time. There is to be only one spiritual headquarters for the church, and it's not Rome, and it's not Canterbury, it's not even Belfast.

16:36 it is the presence of God with his people it's the house of the Lord no longer a physical building but the presence of God with his people every single believer has the right and responsibility to come to the Lord to seek his Lordship to know him, to serve him and yet how often in church history has the church decided that it needs some vast edifice and huge administration poured billions of pounds into creating alternative headquarters that end up very often, often it's for good motives, but end up very often sucking up vast resources and actually preventing people from hearing God's word. New Testament tells us that all believers are priests, but you just watch the creation of new priesthood and you specialized religious gurus or whatever they are that end up denying individual believers the right of access to the word of God, the right of access to taking the Lord's Supper, the right of access to, you see it in church history, and you see it also today in so-called progressive Christianity. It raises all kinds of questions. They just leave it there for you to think about, and the home groups would be a great place to work this out. But there is a pattern in Jeroboam's strategy. He set up alternative religious practices that looked like the real thing.

18:19 They had some of the same language, similar rituals, so that it would feel familiar, but a little bit more exciting probably. but it's familiar. So that those who are a little bit hesitant, a little bit more cautious about this, oh, well, at least they're doing this, and at least they're doing this. It must be okay. What God's word had to say didn't matter because you have to keep the loyalty of the people. You've got to fill the pews, pay the bills, keep our jobs. What matters is what works. Listen to what he said.

19:01 These are your gods who delivered you. Wow, we're talking about salvation. We still believe in salvation, don't we? Do we? Really? Well, it's the language of deliverance and salvation, but it completely changed its meaning and therefore entirely lost its power because the facts of history were that they were not delivered by golden calves, but by a Passover lamb. It was God who delivered them, not golden calves. But let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story.

19:35 And what's going on here is a subtle, or not so subtle, hijacking of language. And it is a frequent tactic in Jeroboam-type progressive Christianity. For example, people talk about the sacrifice of Christ. And we all thought, oh, this is great. They're celebrating and talking about the sacrifice of Christ. But they don't mean sacrifice in the sense of sacrifice for sin to save us from God's judgment because they deny human fallenness and the need for salvation. What they mean is his self-sacrifice as an example of love that if we follow, we will become our true authentic selves, ignoring the historic facts of what Jesus himself said and did. Or they'll talk about people being born again.

20:29 But they don't mean born from above by God's Holy Spirit. Not an actual spiritual rebirth of people who need new life, but rather an experience that brings me into a true realization of my identity. they talk about life as a journey but the goal is not holiness or heaven the journey is to be true to oneself jeroboam driven by the fear of losing the people not by the fear of the lord he comes up with a strategy that in the end leads to people trusting in false religion false idols the work of their own hands and brains. In the end, the religion of self. And Israel never recovered. They remained a divided nation. They moved increasingly from the worship of the one true God, and they gave themselves over to the worship of Baal, until finally the Assyrians came and took them all away. It's a searching story.

21:45 because if Jeroboam's attempts to retain the loyalty of the people were disastrous, then we have to ask questions, what about ours? The media constantly is reminding us that church attendance is dwindling in this country. So unless the church adapts to the culture, it will die. So what should we do? Do we follow Rehoboam's approach? Piling up rules, doubling down on human religious traditions that burden people and provide no rest? That's one way to go. Do we go with Jeroboam?

22:25 We set aside and even deny God's word and provide a kind of false rest of an alternative that is centered on what feels good to us. Or do we do what Jesus told us to do and come to him? and accept the rest he offers and take the yoke of his government, his rule in our lives, learning from him as the secret of rest and stability in life. And the importance of this third option now is underscored in two intriguing incidents. And those of you who have been reading through these chapters are probably dying to know what on earth is he going to say about these stories, especially the one in chapter 13. Well, I'm going to dive in there. Are you ready? I'll probably not get to the second one, but the first one is such an interesting story.

23:32 Verse one says this, by the word of the Lord. We're still in the context. Jeroboam's at the altar, false festivals, false offering, et cetera. And at that moment, by the word of the Lord, a man of God came from Judah to Bethel as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. And by the word of the Lord, he cried out against the altar, altar, altar. This is what the Lord says. And he goes on to announce God's judgment on Jeroboam's idolatrous altar and his new religious sister. I haven't time to read the story but if you haven't read it please do because what happens next is just so fast.

24:16 I'd love to film this because Jeroboam clearly not happy. He raises his kingly arm out to stop seize that man and then he finds he can't withdraw it. his hand is paralyzed. And he realizes that his power is limited. Such a powerful statement. And at the same time, the altar he's offering false sacrifices on splits in two and the ash in the offering and everything spills over the ground. So God intervenes.

25:13 You think you can prevent God's word from getting through, Jeroboam? Your power is more limited than you realize. So Jeroboam changes tack. He begs this man of God to intercede for him with God so that his hand would be restored and God had mercy. And Jeroboam then invited the young prophet, the man of God, home for tea. And we are left to wonder, we're not told, but we're left to wonder what kind of meal would have been served if he had accepted the invitation. Perhaps his own head served up on a platter like John the Baptist had been. But very courageously, the young prophet replied, even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water here.

26:05 For I was commanded by the word of the Lord, you must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came. Now, the story is starting to build up. The thing we have to notice is the emphasis on a simple phrase, the word of the Lord, the Lord's word, God's word. Nine times it is referred to here. That's what's driving this young man. But there was an old prophet living in Bethel, and he heard sons came and told him, you never guess what happened today, dad, you know, amazing stuff that went on. Oh, really? That's interesting.

26:55 So he set off down the road on his donkey and went after the young man and found him sitting under an oak tree and invited him to his house for tea. And once again, the young prophet, because of the Lord's word to him refused. But then the old guy replied, you know, I too am a prophet. And an angel said to me, by the word of the Lord, bring him back to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water. Now, in case you're wondering, the historian intervenes in the text and said, he was lying. we aren't told the motive. Presumably because this old prophet was living in Bethel, one of the headquarters that Jeroboam had set up, he had gone over to Jeroboam's false scheme. But whatever the motive, the younger prophet was deceived by this spiritual sounding language returned with him, ate and drank in his house, and then God intervened once more and spoke in judgment on the young prophet.

28:24 You have defied the word of the Lord. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord. And on his way home, he was killed by a lion. Now what do you think? I know what some of you are thinking. Brutal. Unfair. The severity of the judgment is certainly striking.

28:55 At the very least, it makes us sit up and take notice. It certainly did at the time. Leaving aside the issue of fairness, The detail is striking. If you read the story, there are some remarkable details. There were people who passed by. And what they reported that they had seen was this. The body of the young prophet was on the road. The lion that had killed him was standing there.

29:31 Peacefully standing there. with the donkey that he had been riding on also standing beside him. A body, a lion, and a donkey. Now, this raises all kinds of questions for me. Why did the donkey not run? Why did the lion not eat his kill? Why did the lion not maul the donkey? A point made by the text itself.

30:01 This is not normal animal behavior. It was so strange that the people who passed by brought the report to the city. The old prophet heard of it. He went and fetched the prophet's body, buried it, and asked that when he came to die, his body would be buried in the same grave. Because, he said, the message the young prophet had declared by the word of the Lord. would certainly come true. So whatever we think, however we react to this story, the emphasis on the Lord's word is unmissable. God takes loyalty to his word very seriously and especially on the part of those who preach and teach and lead.

31:05 Now, realize this is a very serious thing to talk about. But James warns us in the New Testament, let there be few teachers, because they will come under greater assessment than everyone else. The person who claims to know the word of God and to have the word of God, and yet who himself doesn't obey the Lord's word, is denying the very source of his own authority and undermining the message. And God takes it very seriously. He didn't simply remove the young prophet from the scene. He intervened in such a way that people realized just how serious this was. So why did the young prophet do it?

32:09 Why did he allow himself to be deceived? Because he did allow himself to be deceived. He knew what God had said. And yet he listened to an alternative voice. so why did he listen to it well it isn't always easy is it to keep going in a straight line when it comes to obedience to god's word this clash with jeroboam the intensity of it the lack of food and water his tiredness the journey and now this old prophet comes to him at a no doubt a weak and vulnerable moment and claims that he has a message from the Lord through an angelic being. It sounded so spiritual. I have a word of the Lord for you.

33:00 An angel met and told me this. Could he be right? How do you know? He was tired and hungry and he gave in and it happened. He was deceived about the truth. and one of the biggest problems we face in 2024 is deception, especially now with AI and how easy it is to create what they call deep fakes.

33:40 I'm not suggesting you do this, please don't, but you could make a deep fake of me and get me to say anything and a lot of people, if they saw it on Facebook or TikTok, they would simply believe it because we saw him and that's what he said and it was Gilbert, his voice, his intonation. We know it was him and people would be deceived and that's just at the ordinary level, if you like. What about at the spiritual level? What about when people make all kinds of claims to be spiritual guides and teachers and prophets, even to be the Christ for our times? Jesus warned us that this would happen, that there would be deception of many kinds, because Satan's trademark is lying. So don't say that you haven't been warned. Truth matters.

34:49 But how do you know what is true anymore? Well, in his case, the truth had been revealed to him. Otherwise, he wouldn't have known it. But instead of holding on to reveal truth, he allowed himself to be deceived by spiritual-sounding talk. and as I finish it reminds me of Paul's words to the Galatians. Some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you let them be under God's church under God's curse, sorry. And that's precisely what we have here with Jeroboam. And that's precisely what we have with any version of Christianity that departs from the truth as it is in Jesus.

35:55 So let's think long and hard. Before we compromise, as the aging prophet did, with the changing moral and spiritual values of the age and attempt to fit in to the progressive spirituality of Jeroboam, and think even harder, before, like this old prophet, you deceive others into joining you, It is a very serious thing to deceive others into setting aside or rejecting God's word. Jesus was very clear that anyone who causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it's better that they were never born. This is serious stuff. Defying God's word is not a little thing. I know the pressure to bow down and worship at the feet of the latest cultural trends where truth is cast down in the name of something else.

37:07 That's why we're to pray for boldness and courage to stand and keep standing. The young man of God was genuine, but ultimately deceived. Not by some pagan, but by an older man using spiritual language, but he had compromised with Jeroboam's progressive agenda and had finished his ministry. Because when God's word ceases to be our authority, we have nothing worth saying to the world. I'm reminded as I finish of a famous quotation from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Let the lie come into the world. Let it even triumph. but not through me.

37:59 Let's pray. Lord, we have been looking at a really serious story which at least makes us sit up and take notice. And we pray that the power of it, the impact of it will be felt in the right way in our life. We're not talking here about the mistakes we make in thee. We're all sinful and we all fall in many ways. We all need your forgiveness and we thank you for it. We're talking here about deliberately twisting and deliberately abandoning what you have clearly revealed in your word and in your Son. Thank you for speaking to us through him.

38:47 Give us the courage and boldness we need in complex days of artificial intelligence and everything else, social media and all the pressures we face and accusations of hate speech and all the rest. Give us the courage we need and clarity and love and compassion to stick with you, to remain loyal to you, to stick with what you have said. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.