Royal Hardheads (Part A)

Learning to identify these things is a skill. Spiritual discernment is one part of the Christian life, but just being able to recognize, to determine distinguished good from evil is a basic part of our faith. And when we don't do that, that gullibility comes with a price. And it hurts the church. It makes people not want to respect Christianity.

And when they don't respect Christianity, they don't want to listen to what it has to say through its adherence. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of 1 Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Book of 1 Kings chapter 15 as he begins his message, Royal Hardheads. 1 Kings chapter 15 this evening. The title, Royal Hardheads. I may run out of disparaging titles for the kings, but they're true.

I'm not picking at them. They're the ones that left this record behind. We have four kings, two from Judah and two from the Northern Kingdom. And it's remarkable in this chapter that David's name, over 60 years after his death, is still being put in front of us in a very noble way. Looking at verse 1, in the 18th year of King Jeroboam, the son of Nabat, Abijam became king over Judah. Well, the kingdom has now been split for almost two decades. And Abijam, as king, Rehoboam's son, he was groomed to be king by his father, Rehoboam.

I don't know if that's a good thing. It's sort of the blind leading the blind. We learn that from 2 Chronicles. In chapter 11, Rehoboam appointed Abijah, the son of Myakka, as chief to be leader among his brothers, for he intended to make him king. So maybe Rehoboam said, well, since we have no record of Solomon investing in Rehoboam, maybe Rehoboam said, you know, I'm going to invest in my son. That's wise and all of that, but it appears to not have been with a lot of attention from God. Although Abijam starts out following the Lord, but he doesn't remain serious about it, which is why he becomes one of the hard heads in the chapter, or in the reign of the kings. In verse 2, he reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Myakka, the granddaughter of Abishalam. Well, very short relative to how other kings reigned. The mothers of Judah's kings are named for emphasis.

They're citing the pedigree, the claim to the throne of the king that is now occupying the throne and fulfillment to David as king. Now, this sounds very boring, not because it is. There's a lot that goes into coming to these conclusions.

If you pick up the Bible, if you were an unbeliever and you just picked up 1 Kings chapter 15, you wouldn't know where you were. And so you take a little time to just color in these important points in the background. You ever look at a child's artwork like coloring? I don't mean the disasters when they're real small and we lie. Oh, it's so nice when it's really not. Oh, you don't find that funny.

I never told my kids, oh, it's nice. Oh, look at that. But anyway, sometimes they forget to color in something in the background. I don't know about you, but I always noticed that. Like, they didn't do the sun. They got everybody's face in.

Well, so I'm coloring in some of the stuff so you can hopefully take that away. Well, Myakka, the granddaughter of Abishalam, it says, that's a variation of Absalom. And so that means Abijah, this now king, that Rehoboam son, his mother Myakka, the granddaughter of Absalom, who rebelled against David. He, again, had a short, righteous walk. He even rebuked Jeroboam when they were about to go to war against each other, saying that you've appointed priests that aren't part of the Aaronic line and you serve idols. And you would hope that after that speech he gives in 2 Chronicles 13 that he would have adhered to the Lord, but he does not. Verse 3, And he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him. His heart was not loyal to Yahweh his God, as was the heart of his father David. So there again, David is the benchmark.

He became an idolater. The word translated loyal denotes, as we know, the word means one who is entirely devoted, and in this case, to God, as was the heart of his father David. Each of the subsequent kings of Judah would be judged by the character of David's relationship with God. The historian is going to point out the asterisk in David's life, because if he doesn't, people are going to him and Ha when we all know it's there.

Jeroboam, on the other hand, he will be the benchmark for wickedness for the kings in the north. Verse 4, Nevertheless, for David's sake Yahweh his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem by setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem. So, after Abijam, God keeping his promise to support the Davidic dynasty, and he is also disassociating himself with Abijam because he is an idolater, but this lamp is going to really be at this point Asa, who starts out as a king that you just love and ends up disappointing you, but no record of him becoming an idolater, and we'll get back to that. So, nevertheless, for David's sake Yahweh his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, and that's the kings on the throne.

The Lord gave him the lamp in Jerusalem. The corruption, of course, was not universal in Jerusalem as it was in the palaces of the north. Now, there were people in the northern kingdom that still loved the Lord in spite of their king being into idolatry, and that's throughout their history. So, God, of course, keeping the light burning, as I mentioned, Asa will be devout, and he stays loyal to God. Overall, that overall part is he stops trusting in the Lord, so some good lessons to come from his life. We'll get to that as we move through this, but here in verse 4, by setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem, verse 5, because David did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh and had not turned aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life except in the manner of Uriah the Hittite. Quite profound because David did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, never strayed into idolatry. So, as we look at, of course, devilish indoctrination in schools from pre-kindergarten all the way up to the highest levels of the university, it's the infestation of satanic influence. You would think that they would stick to the disciplines, but they don't.

If I go to the university to get a degree in civil engineering, I don't want to hear what their politics are, I want to know about civil engineering, but that's not what they're doing. Well, here in Israel, what the historians were doing was saying, hey, this is a fact. The psalms we sing, David wrote most of them, and the psalms that he didn't write, he influenced most of them. So, David, it's a big deal. It was not only patriotic, it was spiritual for Israel, and the historians are doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Look, you're either going to be, your brain's going to be made dirty by Satan, or your brain's going to be washed by the Lord. And these men were doing everything they could rather than putting up these hideous flags in classrooms. They're saying, hey, David was a man of God, be like that.

Yeah, he goofed, but still, he was a man of God. That's what they're saying. Psalm 130, verse 3, David wrote, If you, Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Tell that to the legalists, and walk around with a magnifying glass, judging everybody else. And they do it in their hearts, which is worse, and they don't always come out and tell you, hey, I'm sitting over here in a chair watching you and your family, and I'm judging you. They won't come out and say that, but they're doing that. And I don't know, maybe you say, I don't know anybody like that. That's how good they are. They're flying beneath the radar. They can't come out and always tell you. But anyhow, some of you have had encounters with those self-righteous types that make you feel like you're not as holy as they are.

They just have a way about doing that. Anyway, the kings of the north judged by Jeroboam, the only one that really was worse than Jeroboam was Ahab, who married Jezebel. We'll get to them as we move through Kings. Verse 6, And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life. Now, mostly hostilities between these two, but their children that come to the throne are going to escalate these hostilities. It was good God protected the kingdom early on.

If they had gone at it right away, it would have been worse than what the record tells us. The enemies surrounding them would have taken advantage. Anyway, this Abijam, who is still king at this point, he tried to get the northern kingdom to come back, tried to take it back by force, but it failed. And in that attempt, 500,000 of the troops of the northern kingdom were slaughtered, were killed. And you can read that in 2 Chronicles 13. So this is some of the bitterness and the hostilities that are flying around that don't make it onto the pages as how can you document them, right? You just say, hey, 500,000 people were killed in battle.

That's a lot of widows and a lot of people are going to be upset over that. We have no reason to doubt those numbers either. Anyway, in those days, at that time, at that battle, God gave them the victory. Abijam was trusting in the Lord. That's when he gave his speech to Jeroboam.

The lesson is easy to pick up, especially for you youth. You can start out going to church loving the Lord and all of a sudden you go out into the world and you experience some success or defeat and then you're not walking with the Lord anymore. These kings that did start out walking with God, he gave them victories.

You would think they would build on those victories. They did not. They turned on him, most of them. Verse 7, now the rest of the acts of Abijam and all that he did are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah. There was war between Abijam and Jeroboam. Well, the chronicles that we have in our Bible are about the kings of Judah, whereas the kings, in fact after this chapter, it's almost exclusively about the kings of the north and only mentioning by reference some interactions with the kings of the south, but the chronicles are where we get most of this information about men like Asa and other Judean kings.

So Abijam rested with his fathers and they buried him in the city of David. Then Asa, the son, his son reigned in his place. As I mentioned, Asa would have a wonderful beginning where he just trusted God and God blessed him in big ways.

And then he turned and he grew foolish. And as I also mentioned, he did not turn to idolatry, which is outstanding. As you look next to the other kings, John in his first letter writes, If anyone sees his brother sinning, a sin which does not lead to death. Well, there are sins that do not lead to death. There are degrees of sin. And there are those sins that do lead to death. John says he will ask and he will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death.

I do not say that he should pray about that. So John is saying there are some sins that are huge. Becoming an antichrist, becoming an idolater, they're big sins. And you've got to be careful when you talk about sin sometimes because you can end up crushing those who are doing right in this cursed world and make them feel unfairly guilty. And then you have the others that are looking for an excuse to sin. Okay, good.

I'll be forgiven for this one. And, you know, it's not holiness. Holiness is the pursuit of perfection before a holy God. Knowing that we can't attain, but also the value of that pursuit.

That's what separates the shallow from the not so shallow. Verse 9, In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel, Asa became king over Judah. So now he is king. He is going to bring great reform. Now when we say reform, we mean he's going to try to clean up the land from the idolatry that's crept in. The word reform, it sounds theological or, you know, there used to be a time you'd send bad boys to reform school to reform them. Anyway, this reformation, many of the Judean kings attempted it. None of them completely succeeded.

But it is a noble start. And it prolonged, these actions, prolonged judgment on the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom, of course, will fall to the Assyrians long before the southern does. When you read about the kings of Judah, they fall into three categories of good. The good ones, that is.

And there's only about really six of them. And after Solomon, there's mostly good, there's good, and then there is very good. Whereas the kings of Judah fall into three categories, essentially, of bad.

There's bad, there's wicked, and there's evil. And you know, you see, this is life. These are sermons to preach, these are lessons to learn about human behavior. That, you know, the thing about Hollywood, Hollywood is so obnoxious. They'll show you what they're doing to you and charge you for it.

You know, there's a movie out about the circle, I think it's called, and it's about technology and being invasive in lives and how damaging it is. Well, it's just what they're doing and they're just not right with it. Here, that's what we're doing. Now, be entertained by this. And they don't care any bit.

Who's going to stop us? The brazen sin. Well, learning to identify these things is a skill. Spiritual discernment is one part of the Christian life, but just being able to recognize, to determine, distinguish good from evil is a basic part of our faith. And when we don't do that, that gullibility comes with a price. And it hurts the church, it makes people not want to respect Christianity. And when they don't respect Christianity, they don't want to listen to what it has to say through its adherence.

However, it also provides a wonderful opportunity to undo some of the damage. The Nehemiah Principle. Nehemiah could not rebuild the walls of Jerusalem until he removed the rubbish, the broken down walls.

And this was a big part of the story of Nehemiah. Well, if you are in the workplace or school, wherever you find yourself, you want to share Christ, but he has such a negative reception by the audience, you find out why. Why is it that you are so against Christianity?

And when they begin to tell you, then you can start taking rubbish away. When they say, well, you know, the Christians did this and maybe they'll point to the Crusaders or something like that. Well, what does that have to do with the Bible? I don't get what you're talking about. That's what they did with the Bible. That doesn't mean the Bible told them to do it. And you just have a lot of opportunity there.

I have found that very successful with some. Of course there are others who don't want to hear anything you have to say. You could part the Red Sea, you could walk on the water and they don't want to hear what you have to say. Anyway, verse 10, And he reigned forty-one years in Jerusalem. His grandmother's name was Maacah, the granddaughter of Abishalam. And Asa, verse 11, did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, as did his father David. Verse 12, And he banished the perverted persons of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.

Rehoboam and Abisham. They're the ones that really, well Solomon of course, brought them into the beginning of it. Second Chronicles 14, verse 1, Then Asa his son reigned in his place. In his days the land was quiet for ten years.

This is one of his achievements. Verse 2, Second Chronicles 14, Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of Yahweh, his god. For he removed the altars of the foreign gods and the high places and broke down the sacred pillars and cut down the wooden images. He commanded Judah to seek Yahweh, god of their fathers, and to observe the law and the commandment.

He also removed the high places and the incense altars from all the cities of Judah. And the kingdom was quiet under him. A very noble beginning. And then, oh I don't know, 15 years later, he has another reformation. He stays true. But we'll get to his end. Here it says he banished the perverted persons.

This ongoing struggle. This is sexually perverted. They were part of the pagan rites. They were male prostitutes at this point.

That's who's being referred to here. They were licentious, idolatrous, unclean. We read about it in First Kings 14, the last chapter we were in. Chapter 22, we get it again.

In Second Kings, we get it another time. And the point is, it's hard to get the leaven out. How do you get the... You know, little leaven leavens the whole lump.

How do you get it out? Deuteronomy 23, 17. There shall be no ritual harlot for the daughters of Israel. Now here comes the distinction between the male and the females.

Or a perverted one of the sons of Israel. And that distinction is, of course, being violated in Asa's day. And he is trying to eradicate it. First Kings 15 is giving it to us, what he was doing. But here it is from the King James version.

And this is not wrong. Sometimes the translators give us an interpretive rendering of a word. Because it's too, you know, it's an idiom. Or it's just too broad of a word.

It's more of a picturesque, a word picture than a word in our language. And so then they have to come up with a way to say, well this is what he's talking about based on the context and our knowledge of the etymology of the Hebrew word. And so First Kings 15, the verse we're looking at in the King James. And he took away the Sodomites out of the land.

And removed all the idols that his fathers had made. And that is an accurate translation. Then the English standard version. I don't like cross-referencing versions too much.

Because it makes it sound like you can't trust anything. What does this version say? What does that version say?

You go nuts. I mean, how many different translations? I mean, enough with the translations. Every generation or so, a few generations, need to update the language and come out with one. In the 80s when they came out with the new King James, what a relief that was. But it hasn't gotten the scholastic applause that the new American standard of the awful NIV.

Just other translations, they have scholastic support. And it shouldn't be that way. When you start picking apart their side of the story, then things change. But few do that because scholars, as Campbell Morgan said, theologians like sheep all go astray.

They just kind of lockstep and go the wrong way together. Anyway, 1 Kings 15 in the English standard version, he put away the male cult prostitutes. Now that is an interpretive rendering. The word doesn't say that in the Hebrew, but that's what it is.

Out of the land and removed the hall of idols that his fathers had made. So we see these who are very skilled with language trying to tell us what's going on there in this verse. And they're all accurate. I like the King James, they're perverted persons.

Why does that stand out to me? Well, because of the Frankenstein-ish doctors and the pharmaceutical maniacs that we are facing today that are creating drugs to help people change gender on the surface. I mean, you know, we're going to give you hormones and we're going to just stop you from being whatever you were born to be. So this is perversion. And then you've got the plastic surgeons that have come along and well, okay, we're going to butcher you.

And this is somehow acceptable. It's a perversion. Nothing like it in all of human history. I mean, there were attempts to modify the body even amongst the ancients, but it was so crude compared to today's Frankensteins. You know what Frankenstein did, the fictitious character. You got dead parts of people, cadavers, and he put them all together and he created life into this monster.

And then there was the bride of Frankenstein, who once you see her hairdo, you never forget it. But anyway, this mass insanity, they are tenacious about it. We're seeing this. We're seeing how you don't have a right to raise your kids. They're not yours. They're harvesting kids this way.

By telling a parent, no, your child's in the school system, they're ours. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of 1 Kings has had a lasting imprint on your life. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series or share it with someone you know, please visit crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just visit crossreferenceradio.com and follow the links under radio. Again, that's crossreferenceradio.com. Our time with you today is about up, but we hope you'll tune in next time to continue studying the Word of God. Join us again as Pastor Rick covers more in the book of 1 Kings on Cross-Reference Radio.