Royal Hardheads (Part B)

Let's just say some sin. And you've got someone in the congregation struggling with the sin. Well, you're not trying to brutalize the person. You're trying to just remind them this is a fight.

It's not okay as opposed to skipping over it or opposed to promoting it. And so now it becomes a skill set of the Christian to try to reach those who are struggling. 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. And now here's Pastor Rick with his continuing message called Royal Hard Heads in 1 Kings chapter 15. 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 it very successful with some. Of course, then 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 41 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, he was 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 10 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 in 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. 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, 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 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, and 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, it's, 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, it just, you can't trust anything. What does this version say? What does that version say?

You go nuts. I mean, how many different translators, 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, 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, they, 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, because 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, the perverted persons.

Why does that stand out to me? Well, because of the Frankensteinish 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 gonna give you hormones and we're gonna 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 in amongst the ancients, but it was so crude compared to today's Frankenstein's. You know what Frankenstein did, the fictitious character. He got dead parts of people, cadavers, and he put them all together and he recreated 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 parents, your child's in the school system, they're ours. You gave birth to this child so we could take them. We are harvesting your family for our agenda.

So when the historian says he banished the perverted persons, we want one of these guys to get into the White House and every other house. And they're hard. I mean, we see them, you know, far as slugging it out in Texas. We've got some people that are fighting these things. My point is that the same tenacious resistance that the kings, the righteous kings faced, we are facing.

When I was a new Christian reading and I read, but he could not rid the land of idols. And I would be, boy, how weak is that? Well, now I don't think that way. Now it's like, yeah, I know, it's hard. Well, it's very hard to kill a sacred cow. They don't stay dead.

Somebody comes along and breathes mouth to mouth and resuscitates that thing. It just is terrible. Anyway, he says from the land, that's Judah, he banished the perverted people from, this is God's promised land. The people whom the Lord called to holiness had adopted all the corrupt practices of the people God was judging. So you raise a child to the straight and narrow and they go to the universities, the schools of the world and they become perverted if they're not careful. They become corrupted.

They learn from the Canaanites who God drove out. Leviticus 20 verse 23, you shall not walk in the statutes of the nation which I am casting out before you. For they commit all these things and therefore I hate them. That's what it says. Abhor is kind of a light or word.

I changed it to hate because that's what it is. And that's pretty intense coming from God. Deuteronomy chapter 9 verse 5, and none of these, you know, this is why people want to come to the Bible, well that's outdated. That was for that culture.

No it's not. Thou shall not kill us for every culture. Thou shall not steal us for everybody.

You don't get a pass, you don't get to pick and choose. The ones that are cultural are said to be culture, cultural. For instance, Paul deals with the Corinthians and he says, you know, such rules I don't have for the other churches. He's talking about the Corinthians and how they conduct, the women are conducting themselves. Yahweh, verse 5, it is not because of your righteousness or the righteousness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh your God drives them out from before you that he may fulfill the word which Yahweh swore to your fathers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I'm going to give you this land God is saying and I'm not giving it to you so you can just become immoral. Now here again, when dealing with particular sins, you know, you don't want to, you want to convict the guilty to rebuke, exhort, convict those who contradict.

That's the role of the pastor and the role of the Christian and to some large degree, certainly parents too. So you have someone, maybe they're struggling with a sin. Now I'm not going to pick a sin because, I'll just make one up. Let's say you like bananas. See I get to speak from the pulpit, I get to pick which food I don't like. No, anyway, I was just telling my daughter the other day, people will hate you over the food.

Be careful, in life you don't mess with somebody's sports team, their food or their pickup truck. Anyway, let's just say some sin and you've got someone in the congregation struggling with the sin. Well you're not trying to brutalize the person, you're trying to just remind them this is a fight, it's not okay as opposed to skipping over it or opposed to promoting it. And so now it becomes a skill set of the Christian to try to reach those who are struggling. Well Paul, in dealing with sin, one particular man in Corinth, said throw that guy out, I don't need to be there.

That sin is just the Gentiles don't do that stuff. Well after they did that, then he says okay now bring him back in. Show him love, he's fixed the problem. We know he's fixed the problem, Paul was very clear about not excusing this.

And that is a good pattern. You who are spiritual, Paul said to the Galatians, restore such a one. To learn how to gently, I mean if somebody gets uppity and gets up in your face, well you've got to get back at them. Lord rebuke you, get away from me. I don't want to talk to you anymore. You're trying to endorse things that the Bible has forbidden, clearly that's the end of the conversation. But you've got somebody that says I know, I'm struggling with this. All right, well we can work on that together. So these abominations that Asa was ridding from the land, they did not deserve any form of tolerance.

This, you know, if someone says I struggle with it, you know I want to see God. And he said well that's not what we believe. We have a God that has told us, we have an invisible God.

And he doesn't appreciate people making these monstrosities and saying it's him. Because some of the Jews were saying, here's my idol, it's Yahweh. They weren't all worshiping Baal and Asherah. I mean this was the problem with Moses came down the hill. The people said this is our God who led us out of Egypt.

No it's not. And so some things are deal breakers and should not be tolerated. Well, throughout the land the people had erected pillars honoring Baal and poles honoring Asherah. They were profane. They were sexually profane. And this is, Paul dealt with this, you know, in Corinth when he was there, he writes to the Romans. And when he lays out that first chapter in Romans he's itemizing the sins that are just flagrant and everywhere in Corinth as well as Rome.

And he doesn't pull any punches there. Anyway, these abominations were found on every high hill under every green tree is the infestation. But most shocking of all again was the male cult prostitutes that spring up in the land. To this day, homosexuality is celebrated in Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is like San Francisco or worse. I mean it's just these things. You go to the Holy Land, well don't go to Tel Aviv. It's sin.

It's just no joke. Anyway, he removed the idols that is from in verse 12 and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. The word idol here is actually an intended derogatory jab at the idols.

It means a roll, like a cylinder. And it is, you know, Ezekiel hits it the hardest. He says you worship the dung gods.

And this is reality. It's the fact that the vehemence against idolatry coming into the lives of the people of Israel. Anyway, verse 13, also he removed Maacah the grandmother from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Ashtoreth and Asa cut down her obscene image and burned it by the brook Kidron. If we were in Chronicles we'd be going more into detail in these things, but there it is.

Write out what these were not, you know, little pictures of the moon and the sun and their orbit. These had everything to do with licentious immoral behavior. Either he's a cruel grandson or he is a righteous man and she is a wicked woman and that is the fact.

There's no sweeping it under the rug. She's a wicked woman. Brings to mind the words of the Lord, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, even his own life, also he cannot be my disciple. When Jesus used that word hate, everybody's attention was, he got everyone's attention. But the thing is by comparison, I love God so much compared to everything else, I hate those things.

It is hyperbole, but it is intentional. The Lord is of course not telling anyone. He preached love.

You got to hate your parents. The first commandment is you should honor your mother and father. But if that love for your children or your whatever else in life begins to eclipse your love for God, you have a really big problem. And the solution is, because I know, some say I know, I'm working on this because it's emotional.

But you're working on it. That's what God is looking for. So, this sexual perversion and idolatry, they go together. Because once the fence of the law is taken away, what's to stop the human being from doing whatever they want to do? I mean, you know, the missionaries, they're the ones that stopped cannibalism in the South Pacific.

And had they not shown up there, it would probably still be going on. This fence of the law is what they brought to these places. You can't be eating your neighbor. I mean, there are just some sins that it's an absolute no.

There are no exceptions. There's not a time where it's okay to eat somebody. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just not right. There's no justice.

Well, we were starving. Well, you should have died. You're going to die anyway. Just don't ever put some, don't do it.

Don't put somebody on the plate. Anyway, Acer cut down the obscene image and burned it at the Brook Kidron. This event here is 15 years after his initial reformation. We get that from Second Chronicles, Chapter 15. We find that out. In fact, maybe I'll just read it.

15, 10. So they gathered together at Jerusalem in the third month in the 15th year of the reign of Acer. And then it begins to itemize what they did, which is what is recorded here. The historian in Kings doesn't bother with that.

He just gets to the point. And verse 14, but the high places were not removed. Nevertheless, Acer's heart was loyal to Yahweh all his days.

Big statement. The high places were not all removed. And again, that's the verse I used to look at. So why not?

Because I was naive as a new believer. I thought that, you know, righteousness would reign and, well, it will when Christ comes. But right now, it's just knock down, drag out, fight to the end of this difficulty of eradicating embedded sin from a culture. Look at some of the other countries. Look how much money has been poured into Haiti. And has it made, on an individual level, there are those that get saved.

But overall, the country is just, man, where's the solution? But again, we do succeed as missionaries with the eradicating cannibalism is one example. We are told that his heart was perfect as was that of his father. As we read in verse 11, Acer did right in the eyes of Yahweh as his father David. These are not little things because when we start coming across the Kings where it never says this about them, we are very disappointed. So you say, well, how is it that he's a hard-headed or a royal hard head?

Well, the way he, we'll get to that in a little bit. But he worked to preserve Judah for a time. The divinic dynasty held on for 350 years.

The nine or so dynasties to the north, different families, you know, exchanging power over the north, about 250 years. So you've got a hundred year difference, Judah held on. Verse 15, he also brought into the house of Yahweh the things which his father had dedicated and the things which he himself had dedicated, silver and gold and utensils.

Well, he's going to misuse this, and that's, it seems, well, let's just pick it, see, go forward. Verse 16, now there was war between Asa and Baasha, king of Israel, all their days, and Baasha, verse 17, king of Israel, came up against Judah and built Ramah that he might let none go out or come in to Asa, king of Judah. Ramah is where they made the noodles, the ramen.

Okay, not true. Anyway, just five miles north of Jerusalem. So it's in his neighborhood, he's bringing in, he's taking territory, it's in Benjamin's territory, and Benjamin sided with Judah when the kingdom split, and he makes, puts up a blockade to control the freedom of the people and the trade routes. That's the important part right there.

Follow the money. The writer was dating this event from the time that the kingdom was divided, 36 years at this point when this event is taking place, because after Jeroboam, his son Nabat, not Nabat, his son Nadab, becomes king. Well, the writer skips over that for now, he's going to come back to it. Baasha kills him, so he skipped the king, the writer of, the historian of 1 Kings 15, but at the end, he comes back to it, sequences all out of place, and this is again why the Old Testament is very difficult to really button down so much stuff.

Anyway, you have 17 years of Rehoboam's rule, 3 years under Abi Jam, and Asa's 16 years, and you have the 36 years since the split of the kingdom. So here comes King Baasha from the north, he's fortifying Rama, Asa realizes Jerusalem is in danger, and he's got to do something. What he's going to do, and this is where the split comes between him and God, in previous events he turned to the Lord, we're going to read some of those in a little while, those very wonderful things that he said, but now he's going to turn to a Gentile king, to the Assyrians, and this is going to cause the problem, and there's the lesson, having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect in the flesh? You started out trusting God, you had a successful childhood, trusting the Lord, and God is blessing you. Then you encounter some beast on the road, and now you're not going to trust God.

Now you're going to trust something else. I mean, there are things that God has ordained and sanctioned. Here's an example of somebody taking this kind of teaching and twisting it. So I'm not going to go to the doctor, because I'm going to trust God. See, that's not the Bible does not support that.

I think it's very much intentional that Luke is referred to as the physician. 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.