Faithfulness

All right, first Kings, chapter 11, verses 29 through 38. This is God's Word, eternally true. About that time, Jeroboam was going out of Jerusalem in Aheysia, the prophet of Shiloh, met him on the way wearing a new cloak. The two of them were alone, out in the country. And Aheysia took hold of the new cloak he was wearing and tore it into 12 pieces. Then he said to Jeroboam, take 10 pieces for yourself. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you 10 tribes. But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I've chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe. I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshipped asterisk the goddess of the Cydonians. C'mash, the goddess of the Moabites, and Molech, the goddess of the Ammonites, and have not walked in my ways, nor done what is right in my eyes, nor kept my statutes and laws as David's Solomon's father did. But I will not take the whole kingdom out of Solomon's hand. I have made him ruler all the days of his life for the sake of David, my servant, who my chose, and who observed my commands and statutes. I will take the kingdom from his son's hands and give you 10 tribes. I will give one tribe to his son so that David, my servant, they always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put my name. However, as for you, I will take you and you will rule over all that your heart desires. You will be king over Israel. If you do whatever I command you and walk in my ways, and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and commands to his David, my servant did, I will be with you. I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel to you. I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not forever. Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled Egypt, the Shishak, the king, and stayed there until Solomon's death. Now turn over to chapter 12. We'll begin in verse 25. This is where we left off last week. So you've just gotten the background to Jeroboam. Chapter 12, verse 25. Then Jeroboam fortified Shekom in the ill-country of Ephraim and lived there. 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. If these people go off 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 return to King Rehoboam. After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin for people even when as far as Dan to worship the one there. Jeroboam built shrines on high places, an appointed priest from all sorts of people, even though they were not Levites. He instituted a festival in the 15th day of the 8th month, like the festival held in Judah, and offered sacrifices on the altar. This he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves he had made. In Bethel, he also installed priests at the high places he had made. On the 15th day of the 8th month, a month of his own choosing, he offered sacrifices on the altar he had built in Bethel. So he instituted the festival for the Israelites and went up to the altar to make offerings. Here ends our reading. There's a response of thankfulness that's printed for you there in your bulletin. The word of the Lord. Thanks indeed. Thanks indeed. Let's pray. Our God and Father, thank you for this year's word. We pray that you had blessed us by aluminating this text. We pray that you would give us understanding by the work of your spirit in our hearts and minds. Help us to see Father, your Son, Jesus. Help us to understand his kingdom. Help us to understand ourselves and our world. And what's important for us as believers in the midst of an unbelieving world to prioritize, to do, to think, to speak, to pray this Father and Jesus name. Amen. First and second kings recognize this kind of like the book of judges. There are two books that are given to us to teach us what not to do. Don't do this. It recounts, except for the first 10 chapters that are telling us about Solomon and his obedience, the obedient path of his life and the blessing that that bottom brought on Israel. Just like the book of judges is a book that teaches us that it's chaos if you don't have a king. Thus, the refrain in the book of judges. In those days Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes, including chopping up conky minds and putting a piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel. And the other awful things like that. That's United States and our knightly reading just went through the book of judges and almost every passage there. That's just like, yeah, that's gross. And I would say that's the point. You're to see how awful we are without a king. And the book of first and second kings teaches what happens when God's people go astray. And God's people receiving these two books were in exile in Babylon hundreds of years later. And they were receiving this history. It's like us today reading a history book and it talks to us about Christopher Columbus and the colonization and people coming over from various countries and the French and the British and others and the Dutch up in New York and then we're reading about this. But it's not our current history. It explains where we are today and what we're what we like today, to some extent. And that's what first and second kings were doing as a book. It was originally one we just split it into so it's more convenient for us. So it didn't have like 70 chapters or whatever. But it was explaining to the people in exile why they were in exile. And so when you look at these things don't look in first kings very much to see. Here's how I should act. It's usually here's how I should not act as proven by what happens to the people in first kings. Both in Judah and certainly in Israel in the north for the most part. Northern Israel ends up being exiled by the nation of the Syria in 722. This occurrence here was at 930. So we're looking at you know with 208 years later God's people wind up being exiled. And then in the south in Judah the southern kingdom, and Benjamin and Judah that stay under David, they last until 605, 597, 586, Jerusalem's destroyed. So they last a little bit longer. But all these folks are in exile receiving this book. So this book gives us warnings of what not to do and tells us how we can be safe and blessed in life by not making the same mistakes that we see here. So number one in your outline here or your introduction, first and second things are books that teach the right things to do and believe mostly through the mistakes and sins of God's people in the promised land that led to their exiles in his Syria and Babylon. The first and second kings teaches the right things to do through showing us the mistakes in the sins of God's people, especially starting with Solomon. In the latter part of his life, at least the splits and here in the north with Jeroboam, the king of the northern ten tribes. So number one, number one, safety in your life. Safety in your life and death is through faith and faithfulness to Christ. So that's the first thing God is showing us here. How can you be safe? Not exiled. Not put to the side, not under discipline. How can you be safe in this life and in the next life and through faith and faithfulness to Christ? We saw in second king's 17, which Bob read for us the end. That was the end of the northern ten tribes. It's in chapter 17. You find that the end of the Judah, they go into exile on chapters 24 and 25, a little bit later. But in chapter 17, we see the reason they were in exile and God underlined it over and over again as we read it there in chapter 17, second king. The reason they were in exile was because of their sins, their mistakes, the things that they had done during their time from Jeroboam on. And you see even there in that passage 208 years later that it's reference to Jeroboam. Jeroboam did this and the people continued in this for 208 years and that's why they were exiled by a Syria in 722 BC. They weren't safe. They were run over by the nations and then finally by a Syria and scattered to all these nations around the world. That's why Paul in the book of Acts can go to a synagogue in about every city he goes to because these people have been scattered in 722 by the Assyrians all over the place. So safety and life and death is your face and faithfulness to Christ. A, it is not by doing as the world does. It's not by doing as the world does. The whole passage we read here in chapter 12, 25 through 33, it's Jeroboam not inventing stuff. He's just looking around at the nations that were around Israel and doing what they did for religion. And so you have these things like high places. This is what pagan nations did. Every time there was a mountain, they built an altar on the top of the mountain and they burned incense to their pagan gods and they built altars there and offered sacrifices to their pagan gods who couldn't quite reach down to sea level. So that's why they had high places there and we saw in Deuteronomy 12 there that God forbid that God gives burn incense that sacrifices would be offered at these high places anywhere. But I'm going to put my name or my presence in one place, one city Jerusalem and there you're to offer sacrifices. And so Jeroboam is just borrowing from the world. He's taking in with all the nations of the world said about how you could keep your nations safe, how you could get rain for your crops. The bell was the rain god. And that's why bell worship was so enticing to the people of God. Bell was the pagan god from other nations who brought rain to sprinkle on their crops. So God communicates to us here. Don't look around. Don't look outside this book for faith and life. Don't listen to your favorite music person. Even if he's almost 79 years old and still getting great concerts. If he's there something that's different than this book, we say out of here. Even if we like the tune, but the lyrics are off. We say, yep, I hear those lyrics, but I'm not good fun. You know, all I need is love. Love's great, but that's not how God puts it. We don't look to our favorite movie star or TV star and see what they do either as a character or as a person. We don't look around at what philosophy is saying or what the news is saying. That's other. That's what's going on in the world. We're the kingdom of God. We're the church. And we're like Israel there who's supposed to be saying we have everything we need and we don't have to look around to see what other people think. That's Jeroboam's mistake on almost every case. We might think too that looking around at the world or acting like the world would lead to safety. Again, safety for God's people here is not being exiled. And we find out that 2nd Kings 17 looking around and acting like the world was the very thing that got them exiled. It's the very thing that caused foreign armies to come in and burn down their houses and burn down the city of Jerusalem eventually. And so those things don't make us safe even though, and this is your B here, even though faithfulness to Christ can bring you persecution. Okay, so 2nd Timothy 312, you know, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But God says to us here elsewhere in Galatians 6, that you see reference there above. Paul writes this, did not be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he says. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he says. The one who says the police is sinful nature. From that nature will reap destruction. And so Jeroboam here gives us an example of what it means to sow to your sinful nature, to cave to the world. And what the world says, to get along with the world and what the world is doing, to just go with the flow, to take the path of equal resistance, or as Jesus put it, to take the broad highway that many are on leading to their destruction. Instead, we might take that because if we act like the world, the world won't persecute us. It's only those who are living lives that are godly in Christ Jesus who will be persecuted. And so if we're like Jeroboam and we don't live godly lives, the world will say, hey, you're one of us. Way to go. And we'll escape that persecution. But that's not what we're looking for. Revelation 12-11 says, we overcome Satan by the blood of the lamb. So as eternally, we overcome Satan by the blood of the lamb believing, that's our faith, believing that Jesus blood spilled on the cross covers our sins, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of our testimony. How are we safe by sticking to the word, by proclaiming that we believe in Jesus before others? By saying, yes, I do believe Jesus is the only way for eternal life because Jesus said it. He said, I am the way and the truth in the life, nobody comes to the Father but to remain. Now we all know what's the honest? That's going to get us massive blowback today, not 30 years ago, but today. That'll get us massive blowback. We will be persecuted. You're saying that this nice Hindu friend that I have is not going to have eternal life will be condemned forever. And we're saying, well, I'm not saying that but Jesus is, and I think Jesus is saying the truth, right? That's a little trick you can do. Then they have to deal with Jesus, so that's what you always want to do in an evangelism. But we might think that would make us safe. If we just abandon the gospel, if we abandon Jesus' words, Jesus who spoke of health more than anybody in Scripture, we abandon him like Jeroboam will be safe. But the message of kings that we see at the end of kings, second things, 17 is that if you abandon Jesus, look out. Look out. How are we safe? How is my soul safe in this life by being faithful to Jesus? By having a clean conscience, a clear conscience before him, being able to look myself in the mirror and say, you know what? There are some people that really don't like me because I believe in Jesus. But Jesus, thank you for giving me strength there. That's a, you know, I was like a Fred Rogers when it's such a good feeling. We have these good feelings when we obey, when we walk in the truth, when we own Jesus before the men and women of our lives who aren't believers. When we own him, that's when our soul is safe. That's when our soul is comforted. And when we disown him before men, which Jesus talked about, when we disown him before men, that's when our conscience strikes us. So if we want our souls to be safe in this life, we give the word of our testimony. We are faithful to him, not like Jeroboam. And if we, of course, we want our souls to be safe for eternity, how do we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony? Yes, it may get blowbacked and may get persecution, but that's not real safety. That's temporary, temporary safety, not eternal safety, not real safety. So, see, Jesus provides us an example. Jesus is our example because he was faithful to his father. You know, remember Jesus is the son of David. He's doing what Jeroboam should have done. Right? God promised Jeroboam he said, you know what? I made promises to David to give him a kingdom that would last forever. So I'm still going to give him two tribes, Benjamin and his own tribe, Judith. But I'm just going to give him one tribe that's not his own Benjamin because that's what you were in the month. But I'm giving you the other 10. And if you walk before me, Jeroboam and faithfulness, I'll make your kingdom as great as David. It's an extend and extend. Just be careful to follow me in the ways that they do. And so Jesus comes along and he's not like Jeroboam because Jesus is faithful even though that brings him persecution. So Jesus, he was faithful to his father. Here's the other way he's an example. He knew he'd experienced persecution, that's your next blank. He was faithful to his father. He knew he'd experienced persecution for being faithful to his father. But he knew that his safety was not in the hands of the Pharisees. His safety was in the hands of his father. His safety was in his father's hands. So Jesus is faithful to his father. He goes into the temple and says, what is this crap? Get it out of here. He overturns many tables and sends the goats in the sheep and all the pigeons and I'll just fly in everywhere. People were in this area of the temple called the courts of the Gentiles. It was one of the courts of the temple where Gentiles could enter. They couldn't go any farther. But it was a place for them to come and pray. And nobody could come and pray there because there was chaos. It was a flea market there. And people were exchanging money there and they were selling goats and sheep and pigeons. So people didn't have to bring them from the northern territories like Dan and and and up and down in Isacar and those kind of places. And so people didn't have a place to pray in the temple. And Jesus said, come on of all places on the earth. This is the place to be for the worship of God. And you've turned it into a den of thieves. You've turned God into a way to make money. So Jesus is faithful and you know he knew what that would cause by the religious leadership who was profiting from that. I think they didn't charge rent for that space. But Jesus is faithful to his father. This is the space for the worship of God. And I don't care what it does to me. If I clear it out. So Jesus is faithful. He knew he had experienced persecution for it. But he knew his safety within his father's hands. And guess the minute he says, father, if you're willing, take this cup from me. But not yet, not my will, but yours he's done. This is Jesus being faithful. Father, I'll do your will, even if the persecution I've received is death. So at the cross at death, he communicates that he knew his safety within his father's hands through being faithful to the father. And on the cross, you know what he says, father, in your hands, I commit my spirit. He knows he's safe. He's faithful. He has been faithful all his life and death meant for him a return to his father. So he's our example. You'll be faithful. You endure the persecution, but you're safe. And that's what Jesus' life demonstrates for us. We're faithful to God even if it brings his persecution, but it brings his safety. So we're okay. Second thing. Second thing. So Jesus is the anti-Jerobome. Second thing, the church and I always need to come together. The church and you always need to come together under Jesus, the son of David. Do you care, boom, leads the people away from David, doesn't it? See that there in the chapter 12, looking at verses 26 and 27 there. He says, he thinks to himself, the kingdom is now likely to revert to the house of David. Do you know what Jeroboam should have been doing? He should have been looking for opportunity to hand the kingdom back to David. That was God's original will, second Samuel 7, that all 12 tribes would be under David. He should have as a faithful Israelite said, you know what, I know Solomon and I kind of had it in for each other, but I know that God's will is that the David became over all 12 tribes. And so if there's a time where you know Rahabom and the people want to go back to Rahabom, so be it and I will leave them that way. See, so Jeroboam stands in the shoes of the Pharisees here, doesn't it? The Pharisees should have seen Jesus, the son of God and all the truth that he provided, that he was God himself turning, you know, loaves into loaves for 5,000 people and fish and that kind of thing, walking on water, healing people, making blind people see who are the blind people who are at the temple every day that the Pharisees knew were blind and they should have received Jesus and they should have pointed to him. They follow him now like John the Baptist did, right? John the Baptist was right. John the Baptist was with Jeroboam should have been. I must decrease, but he must increase. But Jeroboam doesn't do that, verse 26. He thought to himself, the kingdom is now likely to revert to the house of David. He doesn't want this, verse 27. If these people go up to off sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem where Rahabom was reigned, they will again give their allegiance to their Lord Rahabom, David's grandson, King of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rahabom. And so where to be people who gather under the Son of David? This is where safety is. This is anti-Jeroboam and where to be people who are not like Jeroboam, okay? Where to be people who are looking to gather under the Son of David, under the Son of David, Jesus. And so 2nd Samuel 7 had declared that was the case. Even in the prophets, over and over again, and I listed for you there, Jeremiah 23, 5 through 6, but it's in other places as well, lots of places as well. When the people come back from their exile in Babylon, David, a son of David, was to be the King, overall 12 tribes again. So you guys know from Ezekiel 37, the vision of dry bones. You know, as you at least know the song, if you didn't know that, King from Ezekiel 37. Right after the vision of dry bones, you know, that's Israel's dead, but God would give flesh to Israel again and he would animate those bones with now flesh in it by his spirit, and Israel would again be a nation in the Promised Land. That's dry bones. But right after that, he gives this vision of two sticks, and he says these two sticks will be joined together, and you know, as you wrap these sticks up together, and he says, this is Israel, and this is Judah after the exile. And they'll be gathered together as one nation again with David as their king. Okay, so this is what we're to do, we're to be people's gather under Jesus if if we want to be safe. This is absolutely essential for us. And so we have Peter's words in Acts chapter four that you had there in your declaration of the gospel. You can look there on the front page of chapter four, verse 12, salvation, safety, now and for eternity is found in no one else for there's no other name under heaven, given the men by which we must be saved. If someone wants to be saved, if someone wants salvation, if someone wants to have safety in this life and the next, they need to be under Jesus, the son of David. They need to be gathered under him, not anyone, not anyone else. So there are several ways for you to gather under the great son of David Jesus. A first way for you to gather under the great son of David Jesus is through your initial saving faith. Through your initial saving faith in him which brought you into his kingdom. Remember Messiah and Christ means anointed one that's referring to the king. That's why Jesus announces the gospel not as you can invite me into your heart, but he announces the gospel as the kingdom of God is here because he's the king as he was declared a pilot in others. So Jesus comes and announces the kingdom and you can be under him as king or if Paul puts it in Philippians 320, you can be a citizen of heaven where Jesus sits at the right hand of God the Father raining as king over his kingdom, which is the church. So through your initial saving faith in him which brought you into his kingdom under his kingship. Jesus speaks in John 6 of the Father drawing people in this kingdom. Matthew 183 speaks of a person entering the kingdom through childlike faith. So the kingdom of God is not the world. It's something someone needs to enter into. How do they enter into the kingdom of God from the kingdom of the world? How they enter into the kingdom of God? How they become a citizenship? How did they change their citizenship? From that of being under the prince of the power of the air, they change it through childlike faith in Jesus. That's Matthew 183. Matthew 1338 calls those with faith. Jesus calls those with faith, sons of the kingdom. So if you have faith in Jesus, your sons of the kingdom of David, of the kingdom of God, blessed under his protection, under his leadership, not like the people in the book of Judges, not like the people under Jeroboam. Next, if you have come to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, you've become a member of his kingdom. And so then be through obeying his direction for behavior. That's another way you come under Jesus and his kingship. Remember, as a king, the king was the law giver. And so to be in Jesus' kingdom, to come under him was to obey his laws. Not to obey the laws of Ammon, or Moab, or Egypt, or Assyria, but to obey the laws of your king. And Jesus is our king. The one who is thrown on high. And so to say that we're in our lives after our initial sating faith in the kingdom of Jesus, under his kingship, we're obeying the laws of our king. Now, the good news is we're not in the kingdom by obeying the laws of our king, otherwise none of us would be as we disobey the laws of our king. But we come into the kingdom by grace through our faith, but as we're in the kingdom, he gives us these these laws which are for our good, for our blessing. He teaches us to do certain things that we were framed to do and that will be blessed as we do those things. And he tells us not to do these other certain things that will curse our lives and bring chaos and distress to us. And so as we obey the laws of our king, we're doing ourselves good. And that's what Jesus wants for us. He's a good king who wants our good. And so that's how we come under in our lives. We call them theology sanctification. That's how we come under in our lives, the kingship of Jesus, by obeying his laws. Not the directions of the opinion of a writer, an athlete, a musician, a politician, or someone we admire, but we obey Jesus direction given to you in the ink of the Bible. Jesus said about his giving direction to his people, John 1027. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. This is us being under our kings, who is also our shepherd, who are one of his sheep. Citizens of the kingdom are sheep in his flock. And we follow our shepherd when he says go this way, we go that way, even though we kind of in our sin nature wanted to go the other direction. Jesus said in 1 John 5 or John said in 1 John 5 3, this is love for God to obey his commands. They don't give me that bowl about I love God, but I don't obey his commands. It's impossible according to the word of God. Listen to this again. This is love for God to obey his commands, right? So one time my dad asked me to get the yard mode and I didn't get it mode. And I hadn't done anything for him, for my dad, but suppose I had done something else for him. Now he got home and he kind of tipped. Because I hadn't mowed the yard. And he hopped on the mower and mowed it and kind of said, there. And he was right to do so. I should have done it. This is summer. I had all day. But suppose I had done something instead. But dad, I washed your car. He could have rightfully said, John, I didn't tell you to wash my car. I told you to mow the yard, right? You want to show me that you love me? Just do what I say. I told you to mow the yard. I don't need my car wash, but I need the yard mode. We got so until coming to a praise the house or whatever. I don't know what was going on back then. I think it's the yard is just long. But how do we show we love God? I think God, I trust you. Your way is right. My life's in your hands. I'll do what you tell me to do because I love you. I want you to be able to bless me like you want to do instead of having to discipline me. And that's how scripture God talked about himself in scripture. He wants to bless us. He doesn't want to have to discipline us for our own good. So how do we show love for God by knowing this book and doing it? It'll be for our own good. It also shows God we love him. So we obey him his direction for our behavior. That's how we under King Jesus. We're not being rebels in his kingdom. We're being good citizens in his kingdom, not giving him trouble, not giving him his king issues he has to deal with in the kingdom. See, another way we get what we are under our under Jesus is through gathering under him at worship on Sundays. Hebrews 10.25 says we're not to forsake doing this. The writer of Hebrew says, let us not give up mean together, summer in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another. And all the more as you see the day that it's the last day Jesus coming as you see the day approaching. Let us not give up meeting together. We're not to forsake coming to under him at worship. So in the Old Testament, you know, Jeroboam should have been encouraging the people, even as they were still in his kingdom, the Holy Tentrat, to go to Jerusalem and go offer the worship properly to God in Jerusalem because that was the place God said here and only here you offer sacrifices. Not anywhere else. Here is where the priests burn incense and don't you dare burn incense yourself on some high place, just any old place in Israel. Jeroboam was to encourage the worship of God and we see in 2nd King 17 that the major sin was he's not having the people go to Jerusalem to offer their worship. And so our King Jesus, we being good citizens under him, are following his lead to offer worship. And you know what his worth Jesus worship was, wasn't it? Don't you? He offered himself as a sacrifice in Jerusalem. As a great high priest, a priest in the order of Melchizedek, and offering not as spotless a lamb as we could find, but a perfect lamb, a sinless lamb himself. And so Jesus is our example there of offering worship to the Lord. So we know that this is our primary responsibility in life that we worship God with all we are, but we, he says, hey, one day the Lord's day is the day you dedicate to me to come and worship me. So it's a critical part of our Christian life. And when worship goes awry in northern Israel, those are the seeds of their destruction and their exile. Now, D, another way we come under Jesus, it's through longing, through longing for his appearing, and the fully realized kingdom of God that he'll bring in the new heavens and new earth. Speaking of this longing, Paul talks in 2nd Symphony 48, now there's in store for me, Paul speaking, there's in store for me a crowd of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge will award me on that day when Jesus comes back. And not only to me, but also to those, here's how Paul describes all Christians, or what Christians should all be. Not only to me, but also to those who have longed for his appearing. That's us. How are we under Jesus' kingship, by not being delighted at the government of our whatever civil society we live in, the United States or written or Peru or wherever we live? But longing for Jesus to come and to reign over us. That's peace. That's what we long for. We long to see him. We long to be under his kingship directly, where he's on the earth in the New Jerusalem, ruling over us in the new heavens and the earth. This is the thing for which we long. We long to be under his kingship, and we should be like a northern Israelite from one of these northern ten tribes saying, I get it. God gave the northern ten tribes to share a poem for now, but I long for that day when just like at the end of this passage here, at the end of our passage in 11, I will build for you a kingdom as in jurn as the one I built for David, and I will give to Israel this to you, verse 39, I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not forever. And so the northern ten tribes, their hearts will be, I can't wait till that day when that not forever will come about, and we'll all be united together as one people under David as king directly, not just not at all really, as one of the northern ten tribes and under a king he's in Shechem and is fortified a place there instead. So that's the art that's a way that we're under the kingship of Jesus, we're long for his return to be under his kingdom directly. So this is the opposite which our poem was doing is getting the people not to be under the son of David directly and permanently, but we're the opposite, we don't avoid the eternal kingship of Jesus, we're long for it. Next, speak in a number of ways this is for all of you, but I want to see how you're connected to this. First of all, I speak to the elders and to you who are future elders in the church, but I also speak to everyone else so you know how to pick a church. If you move away some day, this is how you pick a church and I hope you don't move away, but what should you look for? This is what this is about. Chief importance is this, the leadership of the church, carefully evaluating their focus. You want to ask, is this leadership by Jerobalm or is it like David? How do you tell? So number three, leadership of a church that is elders, leadership of the church elders, for the sake of the people of the church, we recognize that leaders are there for the people, elders are there for the people, leadership of the church elders for the sake of the people the church must a, trust that the Lord, not our bare efforts will bring growth, both kinds, that means more people, but we're growing as individual Christians growing to be more like Christ. Those are two kinds of growth that you see in scripture. We're growing to be more like Jesus, but as a church, we're growing in terms of the number of people we're growing to be like Jesus. Okay, so trust the elders must trust the Lord, not their bare efforts, the God will bring growth of both kinds and he will bring blessing to the church. Verse 25 here, Jerobalm fortified Shechem and the ill country of Ephraim and lived there and from there he went on and built up Peniel. Now, Shechem was on in the promised length proper, so on the west side of the Jordan River, the west side of the Dead Sea, but on each side where a god and a raven and a half tribe of Manasseh were, that's where Peniel was. Okay, so he built up fortified cities on both sides of the river, over which he's brewing, and here's the deal with fortresses. In the Old Testament, mostly it's a negative. Mostly it's a sign that the king is trusting in his military strength instead of in the name of the Lord his God. So you see it in David, some trust in chariots, but we will trust in the name of the Lord our God, some trust in fortresses, in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Here, like David, who says, all I need is a sling and a stone. It's not about physical mites here. You taunt the armies of the living God, well, you're in trouble, not me. That's the face of David. And when David went out to battle, he always looked to the Lord to see, should I go out and battle now. And it's the Lord said, yes, sir, if he's sometime he blows the winds through the leases. When you hear the leases rustling, then you'll know that I've gone before you and conquered before you've arrived. And so leadership in the church must know this. Elders shouldn't be building fortresses. Elders shouldn't be looking at mechanisms in the church that they're doing for growth. So we don't get the bouncy house for kids, right? We don't have Dale Jarrett, the Dale Jarrett, NASCAR driver. I don't know. That's a dated reference. I used to follow NASCAR years ago. But what's that? Well, they'll earn hard. And then there was a, anyway, you don't go for gimmicks to get people into the church. Then people are into the church for gimmicks. And guess what happens when persecution comes? That's not a gimmick I like. But elders of a church, leadership of any church you go into, are to understand that what grows the church is God. So a few verses here, first about negative fortifications, Jose A14. Here's what God says, Israel has forgotten his maker. Israel has forgotten his maker. He's talking about Northern Israel. Judah has fortified many towns. That's a negative. What do you do when you forget your maker? What do you do when you forget that the Lord is the source of your growth and protection? You start fortifying it's all up to you. So you start fortifying your towns, building fortresses in your various towns. Judah has fortified many towns, but I will sit God says, but I will sin fire upon their cities and will consume their fortresses. So elders in a church aren't building fortresses, aren't, aren't building up gimmicks to get people into the church or to keep them there. The youth group that's fun, right? That doesn't work so well when people go to a secular university. Because then Christianity's not fun anymore. You're just made fun of, okay? And then you're out, okay? But the fun youth group model is a terrible model. It sets up kids for failure because they get out in real life and real life. It's not fun being a Christian. You get persecuted for being a Christian, right? And it's okay to have fun, but that's not why you want people in the church. That's a fortress. It's making people feel safe when they're not safe. So Psalm 182, the Lord is my rock. He is my fortress and my deliverer. My God is my rock and whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold. That's what David says, Psalm 18. Psalm 144 verse 2. He, God, is my loving God and my fortress. God is my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and whom I take refuge. He subdues people's under me. Jesus put it this way. The spirit gets life. The flesh counts for nothing. What's going to bring someone to faith? The spirit of God. Not some gimmick, not some trick, not by acting cool. Hey, we're Christians, but we're cool too. I'm so sick of churches being like that. Hey, you can be a Christian, but you don't have to be a nerd. Hey, if I have to be a nerd, be a Christian, bring it on. Right? That's a stupid exchange. It is. Be cool and suffer for eternity. Bad move. Okay, Jeroboam was cool. That's this passage. He did all the up-to-date things. He did all the things that the world said, yeah, do this. Do this. Yeah. All right. Hey, God said, be a nerd. Worship in one place, offer sacrifices in this particular way. Have priests from this only one only tribe. Don't be egalitarian in terms of ministry. If you're not from the tribe of Levi, sorry, you can't minister in the tabernacle. And that's the way it works. And we say, you're God and not me. And I agree. I'm not going to be like Jeroboam and call together priests from any tribe. There are some people, based not on merit, who can't be a priest no matter how hard they want to be. But Jeroboam doesn't respect that. Leadership of the church must not build fortresses. See, if you pick priests from every tribe, then you're a popular king, aren't you? Everybody's happy. Hey, can you make my Johnny a priest? Sure. Oh, I like this king. He's not like, Rehoboam just makes Levite's priests. You know, the descendant from Aaron priest. But the spirit gets like that. So you want an eldership in the church that recognizes it's not gimmicks. It's the spirit of God working through his word faithfully proclaimed that causes growth. I don't know what the deal with Francis Chan is. But sometimes he has stuff online that's good. I think he's crazy, maybe. I don't know. I don't know anything about him. But you know, he one time he had a mega church pastor and he left his church, at least for a while. And he said, I'm tired of watering and fertilizing rocky soil and thawing soil. During all these gimmicks, just to keep people in who aren't believers anyway. We're just going to leave when persecution comes or when other interests come. I can't outdo them with gimmicks. The gimmicks of the world are much better. Okay, the Beatles and Sting are much better than we are. Okay, we can't compete with them. And so we're not going to. Now, second thing to what's for an elders. Elders must focus on being faithful and not be people who are maneuvering to stay in power. They must not maneuver to stay in power. You see Jeroboam the maneuverer. That's a great word. What's that? That's IE is it's French. So M-A-N-U-V-E-U-R-V-E-U-R. Okay. M-A-N-E-U-V-E-R. Did I say it right? Sorry. M-A-N-E-U-V-E-R. That's not maneuver to stay in power. And that's what Jeroboam does. It's like, uh-oh, people are going to head to Reha Boam. So he starts maneuvering and he lies to them twice. He says, you can offer sacrifices anywhere. And he says, oh, it's too burdensome for you to go all the way down to Jerusalem. Guess what they've been doing all their lives? Going to Jerusalem. So he's just maneuvering. It's like an advertisement on TV. You need this. You need a more convenient worship site. And so he establishes a worship site in Bethel, which is just that the very southern part of the northern 10 tribes, and then Dan, which was the very northern tip of the northern 10 tribes. So people could have a convenient place to go to offer their, to offer their sacrifices. But elders must not be people who are maneuvering to stay in power. You know, 50% of the time, this is why church leaders of mega churches fall. They're maneuvering to stay in power. They probably have set up gimmicks in the church. They probably have squeezed people to do the ministry, even when the people are hurting. And then they're covering things up. They're saying, well, that person's not on board with us. And so they put that person to the side or force that you are mean to that person so they get out or they're using their power for ill bad purposes, maneuvering, maneuvering, and then they fall into disgrace. Because if you're maneuvering, you're concerned with being in power, not concerned with God and faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of God's people. So again, Jesus was our example here. That's your second line. Jesus was our example here too, not being interested in power as the Pharisees were, but in being faithful. This is what we read from Mark 12. Jesus said, watch out for the teachers of the law. They'd like to walk around in flowing robes and being greeted in the marketplaces. They like having the most important seats in the synagogue and the places of honor at Banquets. They devour widows houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely. Jesus wasn't interested in being in power. If you see a church and the elders are pompous, run. That's like Pharisees. They're interested in being in the chief seats and being recognized by God's people. Now see, elders must also never mess with worship. Elders must never mess with worship, as God describes worship and scripture. So boy, Jeroboam messes with everything here. That's why you have all these verses here. All these things, God declares, here's how I am to be worshiped and he gives that to us from Exodus to Deuteronomy. Very specific things about how you're to worship me and he violates all these various things. So he violates the place and we looked at that. God said, only worship me in terms of bringing sacrifices and that kind of thing in Jerusalem. So he messes with that. He makes high places. He messes with through their worshiping and where specifically God is the God who brought him up out of Egypt and Jeroboam says, look, these calf idols, they are the gods who brought you up out of Egypt when he repeats the sin of Aaron. So he messes with that, even who they're worshiping, he messes with. He creates a new festival and this is a competing festival. It's at the same time, it's the feast of tabernacles which Judahites would be celebrating down in Jerusalem and so he creates a festival in the same days. Messes with worship doesn't have people worship as God prescribes, but he creates his own temple. As God puts it here, he built a pointed priest from all sorts of Levites. So that's where he messes with worship. But on the 15th day, verse 33, the eight month, the month of his own choosing. So he just says, we're going to worship this way because I say so. And elders of the church should not be bringing things into worship that the Bible doesn't have there that we see in the Bible's elements of worship. And so we see the preaching of God's wearing scripture, the preaching of God's word and worship that Paul goes around and teaches from the scriptures. There's Jesus in Luke chapter four. We see the prayers of the people as they come together. We see God's people declaring praise to God's people singing to him and Chronicles has a ton of stuff about singers in the temple and instrumentalists in the temple and God's people singing to him as they came to worship him. But we don't have things like dribbling a basketball as an as an element of worship. We could say dribble the basketball to God's glory, not a worship service. If God declared that's how we were to worship him, then we should all learn how to dribble a basketball, but not. But your poem doesn't respect that. Jesus doesn't respect selling things in the temple. God did note this part of the temple. It's a place for prayer. And so Jesus stays as a faithful king, faithful to that. Then, D, D, elders must always point to Christ. Not to golden calves, not to something else, not to themselves, but always point to Christ like Peter did and asked for a 12 or like we see in heaven in Revelation 5. All of heaven is surrounding Jesus and declaring his praise. Not declaring the praise of Peter who was dead at that time. That was being written and shown to John. Not declaring the praise of James was also dead at that time. Not declaring the praise of Moses or Abraham, but declaring the praise of Jesus. You are worthy. They say there in Revelation 5, don't they? You are worthy to receive honor, praise, and glory. So elders to be people who are always pointing to Christ. Lastly, elders must thoroughly understand this is kind of a summary point. You want elders in your church who thoroughly understand that faithfulness is the key for an enduring church. And this was the message in chapter 11, to Jeroboam. Jeroboam, be faithful and you'll have an enduring kingdom. Greatly blessed. And elders are to see that as they lead God's people. The chief thing for us is not how we do things or where we're meeting or what color the bullet's in paper is or that kind of thing. The chief thing is, are we being faithful? Because we can build a fortress, but as God said, I can burn it down. With any nation I choose, to burn it down, I can do that. The inconceivable Jerusalem being flattened, I can accomplish that. And God did it at a couple of points. 586 BC and then 870 as well. And so elders, the main thing you look for that that flows into the rest of these things up above is that they understand that faithfulness to Christ, faithfulness to this book, the words of Christ, that's what causes growth. That's what brings blessing to God's people. So summary, summary. First, safety for your soul and life and death is not through your acting like the world to avoid persecution, to avoid scorn, but safety is through faithfulness. It's your faithfulness. Be faithful, get persecuted, but be safe. Have a safe soul. Secondly, in your life you must always be aimed aimed to be under Jesus. Always be aimed to be under Jesus, be under the son of David through first falter believing in him. Secondly, through obeying his direction, being under his law for your life. Through attending his worship, following him as a worshiper of the Father, and by longing to see him returning to the earth. And then the third thing here, note that leadership of the church should always be aimed at faithfulness, at faithfulness to Jesus. Don't look to a church that's the leadership is tall and has great hair and they're good looking. Look to the, or have great ideas. You know, someone says, oh our church is so great, we got this and this and this and this and this. Ask the question, but are you faithful? That's the way church leadership is to lead a church into faithfulness. It's not that God can't use a person who's tall who has great hair, but it's that that person needs to say this counts for nothing. You know, so I know you guys struggle that I look exactly like Brad Pitt

and you all the time have to say I'm not going to that church because he looks like Brad Pitt. No, but a pastor looks like Brad Pitt has to have in his heart this counts for nothing. And I need to make sure my people are not here because I look like Brad Pitt. I need to make sure my people are here because they love Jesus and I need to make my job is to make him more attractive, more attractive. And that's what a church does is leadership is faithful to Jesus and to this book. This is what I pray every, you know, coming around Friday and Saturday and sometimes during during the week that might the teaching that I give you that would cause you to love him more. That's it. If you see him more clearly, if you understand him more from this book, you'll love him more. And it's not love him with no knowledge, right? That's like when you go to a church that has no content and you've got all these jumpy, bumpy, joyful praise songs. You know, it's like having a tank that's empty in your car and being asked to go, you know, to drive the floor down a tank without going to the gas station. But what we do and what leadership does is give you this book, give you this content so that you know, man, I've got a great guy.