SPEAKER_00: When we get to 1 Kings chapter 14, we are at a time in the history of the people of Israel and Judah.
SPEAKER_00: It's dark time.
SPEAKER_00: David has passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon has built the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon has passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon has grown the royal family so large through his hundreds of wives and concubines that the tax burden upon the people of the nation is heavy.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon's son Rehboam comes to the throne.
SPEAKER_00: The people send representatives to Rehoboam and they say, Could you please lower the taxes and the labor?
SPEAKER_00: Rehoboam says, give me a little while to think about it.
SPEAKER_00: Rehoboam goes to the older, wiser advisors and says, What should I do?
SPEAKER_00: They say, lower the taxes, and then the people will serve you gladly forever.
SPEAKER_00: Rehoboam then goes to his younger advisors, people who had grown up spoiled like him, and says, What do you think I should do?
SPEAKER_00: They say, Tell the people, you thought my father was bad, wait till you get a load of me.
SPEAKER_00: If you thought my father was bad, he would beat you with whips, I will beat you with scorpions.
SPEAKER_00: I'm paraphrasing somewhat here.
SPEAKER_00: So Rehoboam goes back to the people and they say, Okay, Rahboam, what is your answer?
SPEAKER_00: And Rahboam has that choice.
SPEAKER_00: He can make the choice between the good advice from the older people or the bad advice from the younger people.
SPEAKER_00: And he's a younger person.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, You thought my father was bad, wait till you get a low to me.
SPEAKER_00: He beats you with whips, I will beat you with scorpions.
SPEAKER_00: The representatives of the people at that point say, We're out of here.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to go ahead and start another country.
SPEAKER_00: And we've got just the man to lead us, a man by the name of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam, the Bible says, was a valiant man.
SPEAKER_00: He was a brave man.
SPEAKER_00: God had prepared Jeroboam for this work.
SPEAKER_00: God had sent a prophet to Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet's name was Ahijah the Shylanite.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the names here in this section of scripture, they are so similar that it's very easy to get confused as to who is who.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to try to help you with that as we go along.
SPEAKER_00: Ahijah the Shylanite meets Rehobam and he's got a new garment.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet does.
SPEAKER_00: He takes the new garment on, he tears it into 12 strips.
SPEAKER_00: He gives 10 strips to Jeroboam and says, God is going to give you 10 of the 12 tribes of the nation, and you're going to be their king.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing, Jeroboam: if you're going to be their king, you need to keep them focused on worshiping the one true God, and all's going to go well for you.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam becomes the king, just as the prophet said.
SPEAKER_00: One of the first things that Jeroboam does, though, is he doesn't steer the people toward the one true God.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he builds two golden calves and says, These are your gods, these are the gods that took you out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: So here's where we begin to understand how to keep these names straight.
SPEAKER_00: You have Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam starts with J-E-R.
SPEAKER_00: There's another word that we use that starts with J-E-R, and that word is jerk.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam sets up these two golden idols, and the way that I always keep them straight is that was a jerk move.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jeroboam, I always associate, I can always, I never have trouble with Rehoboam and Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam is the one who sets up the golden idols.
SPEAKER_00: Time passes.
SPEAKER_00: The people of the ten tribes under Jeroboam's reign are worshiping the golden calves that he has built.
SPEAKER_00: He sets up two places of worship for his fake gods, one in the north and one in the south.
SPEAKER_00: People were taking time off so they could visit the one that was even further away than where they lived.
SPEAKER_00: It's a terrible situation.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam had, God had given Jeroboam the right to be king over ten tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam turned his back on the God who gave him that right, set up these golden idols, led ten of the 12 tribes into deep idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: As you read through the rest of the chapters of 1 Kings and in Chronicles that mirrors this, you'll see that in the nation of that northern nation of Israel, they always have lousy kings as a result of what he has done.
SPEAKER_00: Today's lesson focuses on a time when this same king, Jeroboam, has a sick child.
SPEAKER_00: He has a son.
SPEAKER_00: His son's name is Abijah.
SPEAKER_00: And Abijah is at death's door.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeroboam doesn't know what to do.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening now.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to see Jeroboam, even though he's turned his back on God, he still realizes that he needs God for this situation with a sick child.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody with me so far?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we are today as we get to 1 Kings chapter 14.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we started earlier, Miss Sandy.
SPEAKER_00: I had all this stuff to go over.
SPEAKER_00: So here we are.
SPEAKER_00: Today's section focuses on four people.
SPEAKER_00: First off, we have King Jeroboam, the J-E-R-O Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: The second person is his wife, the Queen.
SPEAKER_00: The third person is their son, Abijah.
SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth person is the prophet, Elijah the Shilanite.
SPEAKER_00: These are the four main people that we're focusing on today.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever use AI to make a lesson, Pastor Dave?
SPEAKER_00: No, but I do use AI to make pictures every once in a while.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: So only had to correct it about five times to get it straight.
SPEAKER_00: But hopefully this picture here helps you sort out the characters in your mind before we get into the reading.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into the reading.
SPEAKER_00: I've pretty much covered that.
SPEAKER_00: And I've covered that already.
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into the reading.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Kings chapter 14, verses 1 through 18.
SPEAKER_00: This is out of the New King James Version.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: At that time Abijah, the son of Jeroboam, became sick.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam said to his wife, please arise and disguise yourself so that they may not recognize you as the wife of Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Go to Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, Ahijah the prophet is there, who told me that I would be king over this people.
SPEAKER_00: Also take with you ten loaves, some cakes, a jar of honey.
SPEAKER_00: Go to him.
SPEAKER_00: He will tell you what will become of the child.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam's wife did so.
SPEAKER_00: She arose and went to Shiloh and came to the house of Ahijah.
SPEAKER_00: But Ahijah could not see, for his eyes were glazed by reason of age.
SPEAKER_00: We'll just let that one sit for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Lord had said to Ahijah, here is the wife of Jeroboam, coming to ask you something about her son, for he is sick.
SPEAKER_00: Thus and thus you shall say to her, for it will be when she comes in that she will pretend to be another woman.
SPEAKER_00: So it was when Ahijah heard the sound of her footsteps as she came through the door, he said, Come in, wife of Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you pretend to be another person?
SPEAKER_00: For I have been sent to you with bad news.
SPEAKER_00: Go and tell Jeroboam, thus says the Lord God of Israel, because I exalted you from among the people and made you ruler over my people Israel, and tore the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it to you, and yet you have not been, as my servant David, who kept my commandments, who followed me with all his heart, to do only what was right in my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: But you have done more evil than all who were before you.
SPEAKER_00: For you have gone and made yourself other gods, you have molded images to provoke me to anger, and have cast me behind your back.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, behold, I will bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every male in Israel, bond and free.
SPEAKER_00: I will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam as one takes away refuse until it is all gone.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, taking away refuse until it is all gone is my new phrase to tell my wife I'm taking out the trash.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't think it was as funny as y'all did.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: The dogs will eat whoever belongs to Jeroboam and dies in the city, the birds shall eat whoever dies in the field.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has spoken.
SPEAKER_00: Arise, therefore, go to your house.
SPEAKER_00: When your feet enter the city, the child shall die.
SPEAKER_00: All Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he's the only one of Jeroboam who shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something good toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, the Lord will raise up for himself a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: This is the day, what?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, even now.
SPEAKER_00: For the Lord will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water.
SPEAKER_00: He will uproot Israel from this good land which he gave to their fathers.
SPEAKER_00: He will scatter them beyond the river, because they've made their wooden images, provoking the Lord to anger.
SPEAKER_00: He will give up Israel because of the sins of Jeroboam, who sinned and made Israel sin.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jeroboam's wife arose.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine arising after hearing all of that?
SPEAKER_00: She arose and departed, came to Tizrah.
SPEAKER_00: When she came to the threshold of the house, the child died.
SPEAKER_00: They buried him, and all Israel mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke through his servant Ahijah the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, that's the end of our section of reading today.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you are familiar with this story?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have heard a sermon on this story before?
SPEAKER_00: One or two of you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you guys get a pass.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have studied this in Sunday school before?
SPEAKER_00: About three or four.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a well-covered section of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: It is mostly an obscure story.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we have these four people: Jeroboam the queen, Abijah, and Ahijah.
SPEAKER_00: Those are two names that are very easy to get crossed in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: So when we go forward here, we know that Jeroboam, his son is sick.
SPEAKER_00: We know that Jeroboam knows that something needs to be done.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly they've exhausted the skill of the doctors and the physicians.
SPEAKER_00: And what does Jeroboam do?
SPEAKER_00: Does Jeroboam drop to his knees and repent of his sins and ask the Lord to heal his son?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what Jeroboam does is he remembers, hey, there's this prophet who predicted that I would become the king.
SPEAKER_00: I should go and talk to him.
SPEAKER_00: No, he doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam says, I'm going to get my wife to talk to him.
SPEAKER_00: He delegates his conversation with the Lord to his wife.
SPEAKER_00: And then on top of that, he tells his wife, You go in disguise because I don't want anyone knowing that I'm sending my wife to talk to the prophet of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is a man who knows what it is he's supposed to do, but he's going out of his way to make sure that no one knows that he is seeking the Lord about the matter.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to come, that's a that's something that we're going to talk about here as we move forward.
SPEAKER_00: Now, first off, the boy that was sick, his name was Ebijah.
SPEAKER_00: Abijah with a bee, Abijah.
SPEAKER_00: That's two words in the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: The first is Abih, and the other is Yah.
SPEAKER_00: And that is basically translated out as my father is the Lord Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: Abiah.
SPEAKER_00: And so even though this boy has Jeroboam as his father, his name suggests that he recognized that the one true God was actually his father.
SPEAKER_00: And given that the Lord takes him to avoid the devastation that is to come, we have here this idea that this boy had a better relationship with Almighty God than perhaps he had with his own father.
SPEAKER_00: Abijah.
SPEAKER_00: He was sick.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jeroboam wanted the counsel of that prophet, Ahijah.
SPEAKER_00: And again, that's another name that is two Hebrew words put together to make a name.
SPEAKER_00: In this case, it's Ahihah.
SPEAKER_00: Ahih is my brother is, and Yah is short for Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: So Ahijah is my brother is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So what we really have going on here with the names is sort of a difference between two groups of people.
SPEAKER_00: We have two people whose names point to the Lord, and then we have Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam's name basically means the people will increase or the people will be exalted.
SPEAKER_00: His name isn't focused on the Lord, his name is focused on the people.
SPEAKER_00: And so this boy gets sick and he wants to get the counsel of the prophet.
SPEAKER_00: And as we move forward, Jeroboam says, go to Ahijah because he is in Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm from Tennessee, as many of you know.
SPEAKER_00: And in Tennessee we have the battlefield of Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: And for the longest time, when I got to the Old Testament as a new believer and I saw Shiloh, I was like, well, what's up with that?
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Civil War wasn't fought in the Middle East, you know.
SPEAKER_00: But Shiloh is a place name in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: When you were reading in the book of Judges, the Old Testament tabernacle was kept at Shiloh for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: And going back even earlier in the Bible, when you go to the book of Genesis, in the book of Genesis, a prophecy is made about the people of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: It's a prophecy that points to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Shiloh is mentioned there as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so this place name of Shiloh has with it all of these wonderful connections of the Old Testament tabernacle and the coming Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where Ahijah the Shilanite is making his base as he's in his older years and he's not able to see.
SPEAKER_00: How many of us have, how many people in here don't have to wear any glasses or contacts or anything like that at all?
SPEAKER_00: We have two.
SPEAKER_00: There are two and one who raised his hand late.
SPEAKER_00: We have three people out of almost 70 who have to wear glasses.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't want to call them liars.
SPEAKER_00: That would be that that would be bad.
SPEAKER_00: So we all have glasses.
SPEAKER_00: I am far sighted, which means when I take my glasses off, I can still see things very far away and read them and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: But when I take these off, now this Bible is just a blurry piece of paper.
SPEAKER_00: Can't read anything on there to save my life.
SPEAKER_00: Now in the ancient world, of course, they didn't have glasses.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the benefits of optometry and all the things that we take for granted here today.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: So Ahijah the Shiloh Knight, he's advanced in his years.
SPEAKER_00: As we continue the process of aging, as our eyes get weaker and weaker, maybe it's not your eyes, maybe it's your ears, maybe it's not your ears, maybe it's your tongue.
SPEAKER_00: Can't taste food anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You're the type who pours hot sauce on everything.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Your physical senses do not determine your spiritual insight.
SPEAKER_00: Your physical senses do not determine how in tune you are with the words and the person of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you are struggling to hear me, that doesn't mean that you're any less spiritual than you were many decades ago.
SPEAKER_00: And yet sometimes, sometimes, younger people can think that because some of our senses aren't as sharp as they used to be, that maybe we're not as close to God as they are.
SPEAKER_00: Because after all, they got the internet, right?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: I'm joking a little bit, and I'm not joking a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, if you're struggling with your senses, just remember your connection with God is every bit as sharp today as it was years ago if you've been walking with him and relying upon his word and praying for him to strengthen you through all the tribulations and troubles of life.
SPEAKER_00: Ahijah the Shilanite can't see at all.
SPEAKER_00: His eyes are dim.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God didn't say, Well, he can't see.
SPEAKER_00: I'll send him to one of my younger prophets.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: Send him.
SPEAKER_00: Send him to the old man there in Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: Let's continue taking some things out of here.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeroboam had already said that Ahijah, as a prophet, he will know what will happen to the boy.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this evil king who had built these golden idols, even though he had done this, he knew in his heart of hearts, he knew that the prophet who had declared that he would become king, he knew that that man had a real connection to a real God who had real power to change what was happening with his son.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a reminder.
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of people who avoid the word of God, but they know that the word of God is true.
SPEAKER_00: I want to repeat that.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people who avoid the word of God, but they know the word of God is true.
SPEAKER_00: They will take steps to avoid the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: There are people in our lives, family people in our lives, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, friends, coworkers.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to have a conversation with you about spiritual things.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to be told that they would be better off if they were connected to a church of faithful believers.
SPEAKER_00: They don't even want to have a conversation about whether or not the Bible is true.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them, not all of them, but some of them don't want to do those things because they know the word of God is true, but they are convicted every time the word of God is brought up in a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of what we're seeing here with Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam knows the old blind prophet in Shiloh speaks the truth.
SPEAKER_00: He knows the old blind prophet in Shiloh has a connection with God.
SPEAKER_00: He's been avoiding this prophet.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't go there himself.
SPEAKER_00: He sends his wife, he sends his wife in disguise because he's convicted.
SPEAKER_00: He knows he's made a mess of things.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we have our friends and our relatives and our family members who don't want to have any connection to the Word of God, some of them at least may be doing that not because they don't believe it, but because they know they've been disobedient to it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: So Ahijah the prophet, we've already talked about how he can't see with his eyes, but he's able to see this situation better than Jeroboam because God has given him the inside scoop as to what's really going on here.
SPEAKER_00: Weaker senses don't mean weaker spiritual understanding.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mind saying that twice.
SPEAKER_00: Not to this crowd, anyway.
SPEAKER_00: So Jeroboam's wife comes in disguise.
SPEAKER_00: She comes in disguise.
SPEAKER_00: She's coming to deceive this prophet, but the Lord cuts through all of that with the truth.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes a world that is opposed to God will tell us things about the world.
SPEAKER_00: They'll tell us things about what's going on in the world or what's not going on in the world.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got a connection with Almighty God, have you noticed how you have the ability to see right through a whole bunch of that stuff and see what the truth of a situation is?
SPEAKER_00: It's there.
SPEAKER_00: God's word is able to cut through falsehood.
SPEAKER_00: So let's remember, God put Jeroboam on the throne, but Jeroboam, according to what the prophet says, Jeroboam had thrust God behind his back in his actions as a king.
SPEAKER_00: You know people in this world who have thrust God behind their backs?
SPEAKER_00: You know people in this world who you bring up God and all they want to do is get that out of there.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to talk about that.
SPEAKER_00: That's how Jeroboam had treated Almighty God who put him on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: Ahijah the prophet, in this story, he shares God's judgment with Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a harsh judgment, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's, I'm not saying that it's unjust, I'm just saying that it's very harsh.
SPEAKER_00: This idea that since Jeroboam had treated God with contempt, God was basically going to make sure that the household of Jeroboam was treated with contempt.
SPEAKER_00: The word of God says that if Jeroboam's children die in the city, that before they can be buried, they'll be eaten by the dogs.
SPEAKER_00: If they die in the field before they can be buried, they'll be eaten by the birds.
SPEAKER_00: You know, since coming here as the pastor to the 60 plus, I've performed a lot of funerals.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of them.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you have been at a lot of those funerals.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are thinking, Pastor Dave, you say the same thing at every funeral.
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, I do, because a person's passed away.
SPEAKER_00: And what do I say?
SPEAKER_00: I point us to Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: What does Scripture have to say?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know the reason why we have funerals?
SPEAKER_00: Why we have funerals?
SPEAKER_00: We have funerals because the Lord's word says, honor the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we do at a funeral.
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to somebody about this earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Every time I say a funeral, I talk to a member of the family or a representative of the family.
SPEAKER_00: I say we got three goals for this funeral.
SPEAKER_00: The first goal is we're going to bring comfort to the family.
SPEAKER_00: The second goal is we're going to bring honor to the person who's passed away.
SPEAKER_00: And third and most important of all, we are going to bring glory and honor to the name of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm not allowed to do any of those three things, you need to get someone else to do the funeral.
SPEAKER_00: To have the bodies be torn apart by dogs, to be pecked by birds.
SPEAKER_00: Even all of these thousands of years later, we recognize that that is dishonorable.
SPEAKER_00: We recognize that that is shameful.
SPEAKER_00: We recognize that that should not happen to anybody.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that was the verdict that God called down upon the house of Jeroboam, because Jeroboam had shown that he had contempt and shame for the person of Almighty God by ignoring him and by causing many thousands of people to engage in false idol worship.
SPEAKER_00: That is the price that is paid.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the only person in Jeroboam's house that would not suffer that fate was this young boy Abijah.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, the prophet told Jeroboam that your son Abijah, he is going to die, but all of Israel will mourn for him.
SPEAKER_00: And so the idea there is that Abijah is going to escape the fate of all of the rest of the house of Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: He is not going to be treated shamefully.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to be treated with respect and honor and proper mourning.
SPEAKER_00: He pleased the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Now, despite this warning, we know that the queen Jeroboam's wife, despite the warning that the prophet said, the prophet said, as soon as you get home, your son is going to die.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but if a prophet told me that, I'd say, well, let's build a new house somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I think I'm going to take the longest vacation ever, and I'm never going to go near that city or my house again.
SPEAKER_00: But the story tells us, the history tells us, that she went straight home, and as soon as her foot hit the threshold, her son passed away.
SPEAKER_00: Now we sometimes we see that and we say, well, why was that poor boy treated that way?
SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, that poor boy spent his next moment in the presence of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: He went from suffering and being raised in a family that was opposed to the things of God in an instant.
SPEAKER_00: He went to being face to face with God, his father, Abajah, and spends the rest of eternity waiting for us to get there, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: He is in, he did not suffer, he was rewarded by being able to go home to his heavenly father.
SPEAKER_00: He was spared the destruction to come.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to point this out.
SPEAKER_00: God said destruction was coming, God said his wrath was coming.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that the person who's in line with God gets rescued from that before all of that comes.
SPEAKER_00: There is a recurring theme in Scripture that God does not pour his wrath out upon those who are close to him.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the main reasons that we can have faith in the idea that the rapture is coming before all of the tribulation gets poured out upon the world.
SPEAKER_00: God's character again and again reveals that he does not punish those he loves with his wrath.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean that our lives don't have problems.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a sin-fallen world.
SPEAKER_00: We live among very, very sinful people.
SPEAKER_00: Life is tough sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: But as we go through tough times, unless we've been out of line with the teaching of God, we should never think that God is necessarily punishing us.
SPEAKER_00: No, God rescues those he loves from his wrath.
SPEAKER_00: That is the thing that we see again and again in the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: One thing I want to focus on as we end.
SPEAKER_00: Israel, all Israel that had been worshiping those two golden calves, the Bible tells us at the end of the story that Israel mourned the passing of Abijah.
SPEAKER_00: Abijah was focused on Yahweh, the one true God.
SPEAKER_00: Israel, for the most part, was focused on worshiping golden calves, poor substitutes for the one true God.
SPEAKER_00: I've done enough funerals now to go back to that topic.
SPEAKER_00: I've done enough funerals now to know that when a person close to God passes away, that sometimes the people who do the most mourning are the ones who themselves are far away from Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: And you wouldn't think that would be the case.
SPEAKER_00: You would think the case would be, oh, well, I sure am glad that he or she is gone because now I don't have to listen to them talking to me about Jesus anymore.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we would normally think.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, more often than not, I'm not saying it's every time, but more often than not, the reality is that when a person close to God passes away, even people that are distant from God realize that the world is a poorer place for their passing.
SPEAKER_00: Why do I mention that in what was supposed to be a nice happy lunch here after four weeks away?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the main reason I bring it up is from time to time some of you will come to me, and many who are not even in this room with us today will come to me and say, I've got a son, I've got a daughter, I've got a grandchild, I've got a niece, I've got a nephew, I've got a friend, a neighbor, a former coworker, I've got people in my life that I'm trying to share the gospel with and they're just so resistant, what should I do?
SPEAKER_00: And my new answer, my new first answer is going to be keep being close to God.
SPEAKER_00: Because even if they act like they aren't paying attention to what you're saying, they are paying attention to what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00: Even if they're not falling to their knees and making a profession of faith in your conversation, they are beginning to understand that what you have in Jesus is different than what they have in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And if the day comes where the Lord calls you home, your life being close to God is the best testimony you will ever have.
SPEAKER_00: It's better than anything that you can say or anything that you can write down.
SPEAKER_00: Keep saying things and keep writing things down.
SPEAKER_00: But the life that you live close to God convicts people far from God, especially at that time where God calls you home.
SPEAKER_00: Keep living lives close to God.
SPEAKER_00: God will even use the circumstances of our passing to glorify himself and to hopefully bring people closer to himself.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: That's not depressing, is it?
SPEAKER_00: It should be optimistic.
SPEAKER_00: It should be something to get some smiles on some faces.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody here looks like they had a bad pickle at lunch.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's no good.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So in Jeroboam's case, Jeroboam, Jeroboam, who rejected God so bad that he caused golden calves, idols to be built and to be placed there in the kingdom, and he led so many people astray.
SPEAKER_00: When push came to shove and his own son was ill, who did he put his faith in?
SPEAKER_00: Put his faith in the God he knew was real, even though he wasn't living a life that was committed to that same God.
SPEAKER_00: When he needed an answer to the question that he couldn't answer himself, when he needed an answer to the question that the doctors couldn't help him with, what's going to happen to my son?
SPEAKER_00: Where did he go for an answer?
SPEAKER_00: He went to the word of God that he had heard from the prophet years ago.
SPEAKER_00: He went to God.
SPEAKER_00: If push comes to shove and they need a word from God, they're going to go to you.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to go to you, or maybe they'll come to church, or maybe both.
SPEAKER_00: Let's be ready when the time comes to give God the glory and honor and point people to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Let's close in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day and this time we've had together.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that every bit of your word, including obscure stories like this, that they point us to a better understanding of you.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, may we be people that the lost world looks at and recognizes that we have something with you that they don't have in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, when those times come, rather than patting ourselves on the back, may we point them to you and give you all the honor, all the credit, and all the glory.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for Jesus above all else.
SPEAKER_00: It's in his mighty name that we pray, and God's people said, Amen, and we are dismissed.