Series: A Kingdom Divided
February 28, 2021 - David Stockton

Well, welcome to Living Streams. We’re going to be in First Kings. So if you want to grab a bible and turn there. First Kings is super old, so old. It’s like major old, old, old writings. So old that, if you’re cool, you would never even pay attention to them. But we’re not trying to be cool. We’re trying to be correct. We’re trying to find the Lord in it all. This is the Old Testament. There are a lot of people in society who wouldn’t call it the Old Testament, they’d just call it the Tanakh. But in our testament structure of the Christian church, we have Old Testament and New Testament. This is old, Old Testament. It’s not even like new Old Testament.

But these words, it’s so amazing how much truth and health they have for us today and what we’re dealing with in our super advanced, 2021 culture, where we know the answer to everything now, or at least can ask Siri what it is. But in this passage we talked about last week, that there’s lots of connections to today. There is uneasy transfer of power. There’s debates and divisions over taxes. Yeah. Political issues. There is building of walls, whether we should build the walls around Jerusalem and fortify them or not. And there’s a continuous redefining of who God is and what his role is in society.

We, as Americans, the framers of our nation said some phrases that still stand strong today. “One nation under God” is something that we claim. We also put “In God we trust” on our money. Which is just hilarious, right? Because, what do we really trust in, right? Sorry. I thought that was funny. You can laugh. It’s church, but you can laugh. But if it’s just a bad joke, you don’t have to laugh.

Anyway, the word God there, when the framers of our nation were using that word, yes, there’s some debate about how they felt about God, but there’s no debate about whether they were talking about the Judeo-Christian concept of who God is. But nowadays, when we say, “One nation under God,” or “in God we trust,” our politicians, our presidents, and our society as a whole, have done a lot of expansive work to that word, God.

And that was true of what was happening in Israel in that day. Israel was God’s nation. They were the nation of Yahweh. They were rescued by Yahweh from Egyptian slavery. Yahweh, the burning bush God that became a burning mountain God, that defeated all of the gods of Egypt. And it basically carved out a space in Israel, in the land of Canaan, for his people, and defeated all the gods of Canaanites. He had established himself as the God above all gods. And Israel knew that and believed that and accepted that.

But now, as we follow the history of First and Second Kings, what we’re seeing is that God is kind of being redefined. And, in fact, we mentioned last week that, like we have a cross in here that represents Jesus, that represents that Jesus Christ loved us and died for us. And if God was willing to send his own Son to die for us, how would he not be willing to give us every good thing so we can rest as sheep following the Shepherd and really say, “I shall not want.”

And we look at this cross and we’re reminded that Jesus told us that if we really want to follow him, 90% of the time, and maybe even more—I’m just too scared to say it—we’ll be dying to ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him. Denying yourself. Denying your desires. Putting those things secondary to the word of God. That is the life of a Christian. And this cross is here to remind us. But this cross represents something to us.

And in Israel’s day, in First King’s day, in their worship places, they never really took down Yahweh or the worship of Yahweh, but they started to add other things. They put a little something for Baal over there. A little something for Asherah over there. And basically, they just started to redefine the name of God and redefine what it meant to worship God. They thought, if we’re going to get the goodness of the Yahweh God, why don’t we get a little goodness of Baal god? A little goodness of Asherah? We’ll get a lot of goodness.

Not realizing that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is a jealous God. That doesn’t mean he’s like that weird girlfriend or boyfriend you had in junior high. What that means is, he’s jealous like a wife would be if a husband decides he wants other wives also. It is right for that woman to not stand for that. It’s a righteous jealousy. And God is jealous for you. He doesn’t want to be one of your gods. He says, “I’m the whole thing, or I’m out.”

And what happened in Israel is, they continued to say, “We want more than just Yahweh.” And at one point God said, “I’m out.” And they fell into destruction and captivity and exile and lost everything.

That’s the story of First Kings. Jeremiah was the writer of First Kings. And Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. And the reason he’s known as the weeping prophet is because he was called by God to prophesy to Israel during all this time. And he was telling them, “Hey, don’t add other gods. Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.” And every time he did they would just take him and put him in prison, or stick him in a pit or something. Or just reject him or laugh at him or make fun of him. That was basically the history of his prophecy. He was speaking the words of truth, but they were not receiving it as a society.

And then Jeremiah sits down, now that they’ve all been destroyed or taken into exile, and he’s writing the books of First and Second Kings to remind the generations to come of what took place in Israel, God’s chosen, holy people,, and how they basically prostituted themselves to other gods.

I mentioned last week that image of the frog. If you take a frog and put it in boiling water it will just jump out because it’s hot and it doesn’t like it. But if you take a frog and put it in a cold pot of water and then bring it up to boil, the frog will stay in there and die. Again, I’ve never tried it. I’ve heard it’s true. But I do need to apologize to everybody. Because last week I talked about it. The whole time I was talking about a frog. I was talking about Jeremiah. And I never once mentioned that Jeremiah was a bullfrog. And I actually had people come up to me afterwards and said, “Dude. You could have just said it one time. I couldn’t get through the rest of the message because you didn’t say it.” So Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Got it. Everybody’s cool with that. Sorry. I should have seen it. I should have made a. joke. But I missed it. My bad.

Which, by the way, brings me to one other confession. For all those who came to the Christmas Eve service, I was wearing a sweatshirt that my wife got me. It’s a picture of Jesus and on it, it says, “YOLO, J/K, BRB.” So to translate, that means, “You only live one. Just kidding. Be right back.” So that’s what it said. But I was wearing a coat over it that basically was obscuring a lot of the letters. So you saw it. And I’d point over here and you’d get that part. Then I’d be like ‘over here’ and you’d get a little bit more. But you could never get the whole thing at once. And I mentioned in one of the services, but I didn’t in the others. So you never got it. Total mistake. Messed with everybody’s brain. I hoarded about that a, too, afterwards. Those are the people I love to hear from, honestly. It’s so fun. Because it’s like, “Did you hear anything I said?” No. It’s more fun that way.

Anyway, Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Weeping prophet. The two hundred to three hundred years of decline in Israel’s history as they were forsaking Yahweh by adding other gods. We mentioned last week some of the gods, some of the idolatry that’s trying to work its way into the church. Obviously we have to talk about greed and pride. Jesus himself talked about the weeds that choke out the good seed: the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches. We want to talk about that. I want to add to that list a couple of forms of idolatry trying to work its way into the church right now. One would be American nationalism. One would be American progressivism. If you don’t know what I mean by that, but those are two political agendas that are borrowing Christian language, that are trying to hijack Christianity and use it for their own gains. They are camouflaging as Christianity, but they are really evil, deceptive idolatries. And one is housed on the political left and one is housed on the political right. And many of us bit into that idolatry last year and we need to repent. We need to get back to what is true and what is right and watch out for those things. But I’m offending both sides, so…either everyone’s angry or everyone’s happy. I don’t know.

One last thing before we jump in. This is a little timeline. It’s one of the most helpful things that I’ve ever received in studying the Bible, getting these timelines. This is one for First Kings and Second Kings. It’s so important. United Kingdom. Divided Kingdom. At the beginning of First Kings, Solomon is king. In Israel, Saul was the first king. Then David, then Solomon. And all twelve tribes were united in one kingdom called Israel. And then, by Solomon’s day, Israel had really become world-power status. David had conquered everybody. They had peace all around. Solomon was wise. And then Solomon’s son was Rehoboam.

But Rehoboam thought it would be good to tax everybody and kind of be this really strong dictator presence, because that was what Solomon sort of was. But Rehoboam wasn’t able to cash the checks he was writing, so to speak, so the ten tribes of the north—it wasn’t really a civil war, it was more of a civil ‘peace out.' “We’re out. We don’t want to be part of you guys anymore.” So the ten tribes of the north made Jeroboam their king. They retained the name Israel. Then the two tribes in the south, Judah and Benjamin, they became the kingdom of Judah. So as you read through, you read about the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.

They are actually kind of united in those twelve tribes, but they are divided as a nation now. And then Israel was in the north. They were conquered by Assyria around 722 and then in the south, Babylon came and exiled those in Judah in 586 B.C. and that’s where you pick up new prophets and new books in the Bible.

So anyway, that’s what’s going on. So 1 Kings 3, Solomon is now king. In chapter 2 he was firmly established, even though there was not a peaceful transfer of power. And this is what he does in his first acts as king, according to the writer of First Kings.

1 Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. 2 The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. 3 Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

So there’s tons of foreshadowing going on right here. Just so you know—you don’t have to pick it all up now—but when it talks about one of the very first things that Solomon did was marry a daughter from a foreign king, that is the beginning, that was one of the next thousand of these kind of relationships that Solomon would get involved in. And it didn’t end up being a good thing, just so you know.

And then the high places. People were sacrificing at high places. There wasn’t a really clear, consolidated idea of where and how to worship Yahweh. People were making up their own thing a little bit.

And then Solomon was actually doing what at the Lord asked him to do. He was following the commandments passed down by Moses and David adhered to, except one big thing. He was worshiping in the high places.

4 The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. 5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7 “Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

So there’s this moment where Solomon is not doing everything quite right. But the Lord is still faithful to show up to him and he says, “Solomon, ask for anything and I’ll give it to you.” And Solomon decides that want he wants to ask for is he wants a listening heart, a discerning heart, a heart that can listen and hear, and find God’s perspective, find what is true and right, find what is true and false. And as you keep reading, the Lord is so pleased with what Solomon asks for, he kind of goes off for a little bit. He’s just pumped. He’s so pleased at what Solomon is doing, that he says, “Solomon, not only and I going to give you a heart of wisdom, I’m going to give you a heart of wisdom that is better than anyone that’s ever come before you, and better than anyone that ever comes after you. And in addition to that, I’m going to give you power and wealth and all these others things, because that’s what I thought you were going to ask for.” Not really. He’s God. He knows what he was going to ask for.

He was so pleased by what Solomon asked for. It meant so much to God that he was doing this. In some ways, I think it kind of made God feel like Solomon was also a man after his heart, just like David, his father. We talked bout what that meant last week. But I think, and Dan Riccio was helping me with all this—he’s a guy in our church that’s a scholar and he helps me a lot—but he kind of unpacked this for me.

Why was it so pleasing to God for Solomon to ask this? And what he drew out of there was, basically, what Solomon was doing was refusing to set himself up as the judge of what is right and wrong. He was basically in this thing saying, “God, I don ’t know what to do. I’m this little child. I need a heart that can listen. I need a heart that can hear you. I need a heart that is submitted to you. Because you alone can see things right and true. And you alone can know what is just and right.” And by refusing to do this, he was honoring God. He was worshiping God. He was giving God that highest place. Not only in his own life, but in the nation of Israel.

And for us, if we really want to follow the Lord, we will have to continually refuse to take the throne of our own lives. We will have to ask he Lord to help us be those who discern what is right and true, not determine what is right and true, if that makes sense. In our society, we don’t want to listen and learn. We want to yell and scream and say, “This is right and true.” We want to determine. We want to throw off the bondage of the oppressive, antiquated scriptures that God has given us, so that we can determine for ourselves what is right. And that was not Solomon’s heart at all, and it pleased the Lord so much.

And the second thing that pleased the Lord so much was his refusal to just be about what pleases him, or what is popular in society. He was saying, “God, I don’t just want to know how to please myself, or how to please the people. I want to know how to do what pleases you.” And, again, our society is totally given over at this point to “whatever pleases you must be the right thing. Whatever is most popular must be the right thing.” And that’s absolute idolatry. And the refusal of those things brings honor to God. It’s worship to God. It pleases his heart.

And then the writer goes on and tells us a story to show and demonstrate how Solomon received this gift, that it wasn’t just kind of ethereal, like, “Oh, Solomon. You’re so smart now.” But he gives us a story of how this worked out in practical life. He talks about these two prostitutes.

They were sleeping one night. It sounds like they might have been int he same home. Maybe the same brothel or something. And they’re in there. They both have newborn babies, which again, brings all kinds of things to mind. Challenges, difficulties. But even worse than that is, they go to bed one night, and one of the moms rolls over and smothers her child to death, and wakes up in the middle of the night and realizes she has killed her own child. And in that moment of heartbreak and despair, she decides to do something. She takes the dead child and lays it next to this other woman and takes her living child and comes and puts it next to her without anyone knowing.

And so, in the morning, when they wake up, this woman finds out that there’s this child that she was sleeping with is dead. But as she looks at the child, she knows, as only a mother can know, “This is not my child.” And as she looks across, she sees her child with this other woman. The woman is saying, “No, no no. This is my child. You’re just saying that because you’re upset because you killed your baby.”

And whatever happens, this very street-level, small town kind of situation spreads out into other people who hear about it. No one can tell what’s going on. Ultimately, these two prostitutes have this situation that’s so hard to know what to do, and so heart-wrenching, it spreads across all Israel to finally make it into King Solomon’s courts. It basically makes it to the Supreme Court. No one knows what to do about this heart-wrenching, difficult situation.

And this is what Solomon begins as a king to deal with and decide upon. And so, in this moment the whole court is gathered together and Solomon is presented with the case. He’s got to decide what to do. And some of you know the story, so you’re cheaters. Stop cheating for just a second. And just catch how intense this moment must have been.

In some ways it seems like a moment that maybe we’re dealing with right now. When we have people with genuine gender dysphoria or challenging sexual desires that ago against so much of biology and society. And they don’t know what to do. And it’s very difficult. It’s been difficult since the desires or the confusion first showed up. And now we’re living in a society that is saying all kinds of different messages about what is right and true. And in a society that basically is saying the word of God is old and oppressive and should be done away with, or just interpreted to serve whatever you think is right.

It’s a tough situation. It’s challenging because it’s real and painful, and it’s hard. Do we stick with what the word of God says very clearly from beginning to end? Do we take what God wrote into the fabric of humanity about gender and marriage and family? Or do we allow something within us to go, “No. Maybe that’s not true.” Or, “Maybe that’s not true for me.” It’s very, very difficult.

Or think about what’s going on in the black community, as they experience all this confusion and hardship, some of what Michael described. That’s just one story among many. They look around and they’re not quite sure where they fit in society. They look around and they see other people experiencing things that they don’t know if they’ll ever be able to experience. They see people with their own color skin going through struggles. And we have to figure out what we can do to help the situation. And some people are saying we should go this way, some people we should go this way. All kinds of different offerings are being offered, some of them in line with biblical values, some of them way off and even against biblical values.

We have to decide, “What do we do?” And the first thing I want you to realize is King Solomon so he’s got to decide this thing. But he could also just write this off, ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen. He’s still king. But for you and I, we are called to be a kingdom of priests. Kings and priests of God. We are supposed to be salt and light in this world. We need to go into situations like this and bring the truth and love of God so that justice can actually happen. We don’t sit around and wait for society to figure it out. They never will. We have the Spirit of God. We’ve been cleansed with the blood of Jesus. We have the word of God. And we need to be going and finding situations and not shrinking away from them, but begging God for the wisdom to actually do something that helps. It’s our call. That’s what Jesus did.

So Solomon, in this situation of impossible, no way to know. Solomon didn’t know what was right. He didn’t know who was lying and who was telling the truth. But he had asked the Lord for a discerning heart. In this moment, something came into his mind. Not what was true or what was right, but a way to find out what was true or right. So he calls to someone and says, “Bring me a sword.” So they bring him a sword. At that time there were a lot more swords lying around, I guess. If I just said, “Bring me a sword,” I don’t know how long it would take for me to actually get a sword. But it was quick. He got a sword.

Then he walks down to this little baby and he says, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to cut the baby in half and I’m going to give half to that mom, half to that mom.” And you can almost feel the collective sigh in the room, “Great. Our new king is absolutely insane. This is not going to be good. How could he do that?”

If the media was there, think of all the story lines that would go out. And as he lifts that sword to go chop that baby, one of the moms cries out and says, “Please stop! Just give her the baby. Please do not hurt the baby!”

Solomon puts the sword down and says, “I’m going to make my ruling now. Take this baby and give it to the woman that was willing to give up that son’s life just to protect him. Because she’s the true mom.” And everyone in the room didn’t have to debate what was true and right. They didn’t have to wonder, “Oh, was this really right?” Everyone in that moment knew exactly what was true and what was right. And they all rejoiced.

Solomon’s renown obviously spread as a great king of wisdom. But this is, and I mean I don’t know how else to say it, this is what we as the people of God are called to do. To be salt and light. To execute justice in our world. To right the wrongs in society. Just like Solomon was able to do in this moment. Just like Jesus, the one we’re following, did time and time again when they came and put him in an impossible situation. “Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law says we should stone her. What do you say?”

And Jesus was able to create a moment, come up with another option that caused everyone to know that God is in this place, and go home with their pride and their judgment that was false, and this woman to walk free and to know the love of God.

We are the Church. We are the Bride of Christ. We are his sons and daughters. This is our call, to walk in this way. So how do we do it? How do we do it? Well, first I think we’ve got to pray and ask the Lord for a listening heart, a discerning heart. Absolutely. And then, after we’ve done that, we’ve go to go to this place where, when we are faced with this situation, we’ve got to listen. A discerning heart is a listening heart.

So when someone comes to you with something they are carrying, you don’t immediately say this or that, you listen to what’s going on. You hear them out. And you listen for what the Lord is saying. And in this moment, somehow the Lord put in Solomon’s mind, Get a sword. Pretend to chop the baby. Then you’ll find out what’s true.

For me and my wife, one time it was, Go to Belize and see what I have for you there. It was like, “Whoa. We’ve got a one-year-old daughter. We can’t just be going to Belize. It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got all kinds of people telling us that.”

Then the second time the Lord told us to go, I had a kid in a wheelchair. You can’t just go places with kids in wheelchairs. It didn’t make any sense. But we had this idea that we were supposed to go.

Solomon had this idea. But he also had the courage to walk in it. The courage to try it out. And so he got the sword and he went for it. What came was a revelation that made it clear for everybody that it was right.

And by God’s grace, we’ve come back from Belize. Everyone that knows us, that knows our story, they’re like, “Yeah, I think that was right.” Now you say that. Telling us, “Don’t do it.” Now you’re saying, “Oh, yeah. That was the Lord. That was great.” That’s the way it goes sometimes.

But one last thing. We’ve got to pray for a discerning heart, definitely. We’ve got to make sure we listen when he Lord is speaking to us in each and every situation. And we’ve got to have the courage to walk those things out. So that not only us, but everybody else can see what the Lord’s doing.

But one last thing that we cannot forget is that Solomon asked for a sword. He asked for a sword and, in the scriptures, it’s very clear to us in Hebrews chapter 4:

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

What we have in this book right here, whether you like it or not, whether it adheres to your desires or not, whether it’s popular in society or not, this is the sword that we have to cut through the crap. This is the sword that we have. And this is not this sword’s first rodeo. Societies come and go but the word of God has stood forever, and will withstand whatever our society decides it wants to do. This is living and powerful. We’re reading a book that is thousands of years old and it’s speaking right to the core of our society today. It’s alive. And it is powerful. And it is trustworthy. You can stand on this. And it is becoming more and more unpopular, more and more resisted, and more and more offensive—not because anything’s wrong with this. But Solomon used a sword.

And Jesus is doing the same thing with us. He’s telling us we need to use the sword. When you look at Jesus’ life. When the devil came and tempted him. He gave him three temptations. When we read those temptations, it’s almost fairytale. But those were falling right at the core identity that was in Jesus. He was hungry. He was God. And the temptations actually kind of went right at the core of those issues. And yet, Jesus Christ answered every single one of those temptations with a scripture that actually came straight from the Old Testament. He knew how important in the day of opposition, in the day of temptation, to use the word of God and know the word of God.

For us, as people, if we want to get it right in 2021, if we don’t want to be blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine, we need to know the word of God. We need to stand on the word of God.

There’s one organization I’m investigating right now, especially in the idea of justice. They’re called the AND Campaign. There are all these social justice organizations that are basically resisting or anti-biblical values. Why can’t it be social justice and biblical values? Why can’t we understand that our biblical values actually command and demand us to do social justice. But also, if we try to do social justice without biblical values, we’re just causing more harm than good. There are lots of organizations like that right now.

Solomon used the sword. Solomon prayed for a discerning heart. He listened to see what the Lord might say. He walked courageously in that. And he never forgot to use the sword.

Will you guys pray with me? I thought it would be good for us to just go to our knees right now if you’re able. Online or in person, just spend a moment coming before the throne of God, our Father Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, Who has never spoken a word that wasn’t true. Who’s never thought a thought that wasn’t beautiful. Who’s never done a single thing that wasn’t for our good.

Father in heaven, you are holy. You see everything clearly. You cannot be moved. You can’t be manipulated. You cannot be deceived. And you are so hungry for justice. So we, Lord, we ask that you would give us a discerning heart. I pray for each person right now that is touched by one of these difficult situations we’ve mentioned, someone who is feeling all of the burden of the divide of race in our country, whether it’s their own personal feelings or someone they love, I pray you’d give them a discerning heart, Lord. That they’d be able to do something beautiful in their community, just like Solomon did on this day.
I pray for those with gender dysphoria, or are dealing with sexual attractions that don’t fit in line with your scriptures. I pray you’d meet them right where they are, that they’d know that you’re for them, you love them, and you are a great rewarder of those who honor you, no matter what the cost is.
We need your wisdom in our day. Jesus, we thank you for your words and your life example.

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