The Sword Room

Today I want to continue where I left off yesterday by launching into 1 Kings 13. We saw in chapter 12 how the kingdom had been split into two halves, the northern and southern and how Jeroboam introduced a new apostate religious system in the northern kingdom.

Chapter 13 begins with an unidentified prophet being instructed by the word of the Lord to go north to Bethel to pronounce judgment against Jeroboam as he offers incense at the altar of his false gods. The judgment will be meted out through a future godly Davidic king named Josiah, who will slaughter the false priests and offer them as sacrifices on their own altar. As a confirmatory sign the altar is split in half and the ashes are poured out on the ground. Jeroboam stretches out his hand and orders his men to arrest the prophet, but when he does this his hand is withered and frozen in place. Jeroboam  begs the prophet to pray to the Lord for the restoration of the hand, which he does. Once the hand is healed Jeroboam urges the prophet to come and dine with him and receive a monetary reward. The prophet refuses, having been commanded by the Lord previously not to eat or drink with anyone while on his mission, and to return by an alternate route.

An old prophet living in Bethel is informed by his sons about the episode, and he goes out to meet the visiting prophet and extend an invitation of food and lodging. The visiting prophet refuses, citing the Lords prohibition, but the elderly prophet lies and says he has received a word from God to the effect that the visiting prophet is to eat with him and spend the night in his home. The visiting prophet accepts the invitation, and the next day as he is en route to Judah he is attacked and killed by a lion. The lion does not eat the man and does not attack the donkey. Instead the lion and donkey stand by the corpse of the prophet as people pass by on the road.

I see several practical applications from this story. The first is that God will not tolerate the worship of any other gods, nor will he excuse any form of worship other than what he has prescribed in scripture. Jeroboam and his false priests were in violation of the first three of the ten commandments, and for their idolatrous practices they were under the sentence of death: they were to be slaughtered like beasts and burned on their own pagan altars. In our country we hear tolerance of other faiths praised, but this attitude does not come from God. Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Buddhism, and all other religions that do not embrace and honor the true God of scripture are false and abominable before the Lord. There is only one true God and one way of access to Him, as prescribed in scripture; and all other paths lead directly to death and hell.

We also see that God punishes disobedience. The false priests had been judged, and to show the earnestness of the promise of death the Lord punished his own prophet as a sign to wicked Jeroboam. If God would take the life of the prophet for what seemed like a trivial act of disobedience, how much more sure was the fate of those who worshipped and offered sacrifices to the calf idols at Bethel, condemning not only themselves but also the masses of Israelites led astray by their apostacy?

We also see the foolishness of listening to others instead of the Lord. God had spoken to the prophet with explicit instructions. When the elderly prophet approached him with an alleged word to the contrary, he should have not heeded it. Personally, I do not believe God is talking to anyone outside His word in an audible voice. But I can tell you this: if God ever wants to tell me something He knows my address–He can speak to me directly. The last thing I want to hear is some pious moron coming to me with a spoken word from God to him for me.

We see that at the end of the story Jeroboam, despite God’s mercy in sending a prophet to warn him and then heal his withered hand, refused to repent, even after the prophet had been killed by the lion for his disobedience. Sin hardens the heart, and repeated stiff-necked rebellion callouses the heart even more.

This story makes me even more conscious of the deceitfulness of sin. We need to stay close to God and His Word. We need to worship no one but the God of the bible who is one and the same with the Jesus of the Bible. Let our justification be by faith alone in Christ alone. Let us share the good news of the gospel with those around us who are lost and in darkness in the bondage of the world’s false and satanic belief systems. God will call His sheep to Himself in His own time and way, and blessed are we to be instruments of redemption in His hand.

Israel rejected God as their king in place of an earthly ruler. In their foolishness they thought a powerful human warrior king would provide them the visible tangible security they desired, instead of the theocratic system where they must trust the unseen God and rely on a succession of judges raised up by the Lord for their protection and deliverance. As then so now, people want to look to a man instead of God.

So God gave the people what they wanted–Saul. Saul was a handsome man who stood head-and-shoulders above the people; but inside he was a cowardly, spineless, compromising fool who ultimately was forsaken by the Lord and after consulting a medium for guidance before taking his own life on the field of battle entered into an eternity of conscious torment.

After Saul it was David who, although he was a man after God’s own heart, was a loose cannon with a weakness for women. When he died he was succeeded by his son Solomon. Solomon was granted extraordinary wisdom by the Lord but he was so busy building an ornate temple supposedly for the Lord, that he laid a heavy burden of taxation on the people while at the same time allowing their worship of pagan deities to go unchecked. When he died and was succeeded by his son Rehoboam the people were fed up.

I have been reading about these events today in 1 Kings 12. When Rehoboam came to power the northern ten tribes assembled at Shechem to ask for relief from the heavy burden of taxation. Such a request was not unreasonable given the fact that the temple was completed. Rehoboam’s elderly and more seasoned advisors counseled him to grant the request of the people; but he ignored their advice and listened to his younger circle of friends and told the people: My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins….My father chastised you with cords, but I will chastise you with whips (12:10-11).

What happens when people are squashed under the hand of a heartless despot who will not listen to their cries? They rebel and look, not to God, but for another human ruler who will dance to their drum and offer them a meal ticket. The application to our present situation here in America is obvious. Many feel that we have a president who disregards the constitution, does an end-around the legislative branch with executive orders, and puts political pressure on the judicial branch to get them on board with his agenda. Working class people and business owners are complaining about higher taxes squandered on government handout programs. Illegal aliens are receiving better benefits than military veterans. First and Second Amendment rights are hanging in the balance and people are asked to tighten the belt at a time when the president spends millions to go play golf in Florida with Tiger Woods, and the first Lady opens the envelope and announces the Oscar winner. Of course we are not in a covenant relationship with God as was Israel–the church is God’s holy nation, royal priesthood, and special people (1 Peter 2:8-10).

The ten tribes from the north looked to Jeroboam as their deliverer. They broke away from Judah and Levi to the south–seceded from the union, if you will. But Jereboam, who had been a military superstar under Solomon, adopted golden-calf worship during his exile in Egypt after Solomon started viewing him as a rival and put out a hit on his life. Jereboam didn’t want the people to be tied to the temple in Jerusalem and the Levitical system of worship, as prescribed by God in the Mosaic Covenant. So he created a new centralized place of worship–actually two: one in Bethel, the southernmost extremity of his domain, and one in Dan at the northernmost border. He had two golden calves made and created a whole new caste of priests who were not descendants of Levi or Aaron. This was a completely apostate system, but Jeroboam convinced the people that these golden calves were indeed responsible for their exodus from Egyptian bondage years earlier. How? He offered them freedom from oppression and a better meal ticket. That’s all it took then, and that’s all it would take now.

However, as believers we need to step back from the fervor, take a deep breath, and see one thing very clearly with regard to our current situation. For the king did not listen to the people; for the turn of events was from the lord (12:15). What we are seeing in our country has come to pass by the sovereign eternal decree of God–not one speck of it is outside His control. God has given us a godless, wicked, unregenerate, arrogant, autocratic president because we have rejected Him who is the only source of life and have carved out broken cisterns for ourselves that can hold no water. We are getting what we deserve. That smoldering stub, Jeremiah Wright, spoke prophetically after the fashion of Balaam’s ass when he declared that America’s chickens have come home to roost. The evangelical church in America has been slowly rotting from the inside out for decades, having been infected with the spiritual AIDS virus of Arminianism and the puny false god of the Arminian system. There is a famine in the land for the word of God. We have Bibles galore but no one wants to actually teach fearlessly the truths contained in those sacred pages. The remedy for our national ills is revival within the body of Christ. What we do not need is more dispy-Arminianism, psychobabble, and warm fuzzy swooning to narcissistic ditties and pulpit pabulum.

The Tea Party is a joke. Too many believers have mistaken the right wing of the Republican Party for the Kingdom of God. That is a mistake with disastrous consequences. Why? Because if you seek relief from oppression but refuse to repent of your false system of theology and the false god of that system, ultimately you will be swapping one godless leader for another. You will reject Rehoboam and replace him with Jeroboam. If you don’t understand where I’m going I strongly urge you to read my book: Breaking the Box: Rebuilding Faith in the God of the Bible.

I’m sorry, but this is no time to mince words. Time for all of us as God’s elect to get off our ass and on our knees. Time to pull our heads out of our derrieres and get that nose into the Word of God instead of the TV or computer screen. There is no guarantee of a best life now. Things may likely get worse before they get better. You may get cold, tired and hungry waging the good fight–but do not trade your birthright for a bowl of soup, thereby proving that like Esau you are a reprobate hated by God and headed for damnation.

Repent. And realize that God’s eternal purpose can never be confounded. Remember too, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism reminds us, that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. There is a joy and peace in serving the true God of Scripture and the real Jesus that transcends all description and comprehension.

Time to wake up and smell the spiritual coffee. Straight up, strong, and steaming hot.

It is one thing to hold strong theological convictions. It is another matter entirely to not know which issues are non-negotiable core essentials. As the old saying goes–in the essentials unity and in the non-essentials charity. We would all doubtless agree that the gospel is non-negotiable, as are doctrines like the deity of Christ, justification by faith, and the inspiration of Scripture. We would also reject beliefs which float on the loony-fringe of the faith, such as numerology, open theism, and name-it-claim it.

Where we run into problems is those areas where true believers with firm convictions differ. For example the time of the rapture relative to the tribulation. I happen to not hold to the dispensational scheme at all, having long-since opted for a preterist amillennial view of eschatology. I do not believe in infant baptism. I do not speak in tongues or hold to the Pentecostal doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Of course there is the Calvinism-Arminianism debate, and you all know which side of the fence I stand on there.

To be sure I believe my dispensational, Pentecostal, covenantal, and Arminian brothers are sorely mistaken. But to call them heretics would be a real mistake. Heresy is something that historically has gotten you burned at the stake. I gladly fellowship with genuine believers who agree with me on the gospel and what we mutually consider to be the core essentials of the faith. I do not believe things like Arminianism and Calvinism can be resolved into a sort of hybrid Calminianism. Oil and water do not mix, no matter how hard you shake the bottle. But the basis of Christian fellowship is not verbatim agreement on non-essential doctrine. If you believe the gospel and the word of God I will give you the right hand of fellowship any day and twice on Sunday.

Some of you younger studs need to ratchet down your misplaced zeal a couple notches and stop bashing the brethren. Disagree vigorously over an open Bible, but do not label someone as a heretic just because they do not ride the same hobby horse as you. There are already too many morons on youtube spouting idiocy into the webcam from their trailers or studio apartments.

Don’t be one of them.