Series: A Kingdom Divided
March 7, 2021 - David Stockton

Good morning. It’s very, very, very encouraging to see people here after the last two weeks of messages. Uneasy laughter. It makes sense. It’s been a bit dicey the last couple of weeks. We’ve been going through First Kings. We’re getting a heavy dose of something. And I really am thankful that people are coming to hear God’s word. I’m thankful for the people who are encouraging me. Because you know that I’m just kind of trying to do my best. I’m not perfect in any way and don’t have all this stuff figured out. But I’m trying to really dissect what our cultural moment is describing to us as a vision for God’s righteousness; and trying to get into the biblical narrative and find out what is really a vision for God’s righteousness—against what is popular in our culture, and maybe what is against what’s going on in our own souls and minds.

I don’t claim to be good at it or perfect at it in any way. But I’m doing my best. And thankfully, we have the word of God. I have some people that I’m able to process with. I really do feel like the messages that I’ve been preaching really do represent our elder team and our leadership team here, our staff, all of those things. So I feel good about all of that. But I also know that words can go different ways and they can hit people in different ways. So I’m also thankful for all the people who have been engaging in some dialogue with me through email, saying, “I heard you say this. I want to unpack that a little bit and make sure I’m hearing what you’re saying.”

I know there are people who are deciding whether they really want to stick with Living Streams or not. Because we’re really kind of drawing some lines that are not super popular in society today. So some people are deciding to move on. And I don’t blame them, you know, if that’s what they feel; because we’re not going to adjust or budge or try and let the culture dictate what we preach or what the word of God says. We’re going to let the word of God interpret our culture for us. It’s interesting. I do feel a lot of encouragement. The most encouragement I feel is when someone is actually willing to dialogue. So if you’re thinking about leaving or thinking about saying, “I can’t be here anymore,” I totally understand. But I would like to be able to have a conversation before you go, just to make sure we are dividing over what we are actually dividing over, and not just that you heard something strange or weird that I was saying. Because I know I can mess up too.

That being said, thanks for being here. Hopefully we’ll see you next week. We’re still in First Kings. We’re going to be going through First Kings again, we’ve been looking at this super, super ancient, near-eastern document that’s been preserved for all this time. It’s very old. It’s very outdated. It’s a very different cultur. All of these things. And yet, we think it’s the inspired word of God and has a lot to say to us, because people really aren’t that different from the way they’ve always been. We have the same problems and challenges.

We’ve seen lots of connections from First Kings. There are uneasy transfers of power, which is something we’ve experienced in America. There are debates and divisions over taxes. Again, America. There’s lots of division over political issues. They’re building a wall, which is fun. And it’s a time in Israel’s history where there is tons of prosperity. Prominence, prosperity, world power, all of that is going on. And that’s what we’re experiencing.

At the same time this is going on, the writer, who most likely is Jeremiah, is recording for us a lot of the idolatry that was taking place in the midst of the prosperity. So I think we’re experiencing right now in America, that all of our prosperity has led us to some forms of idolatry in our nation, that displeases God.

So this prophet was writing to his people in his day to try to warn them to not fall into these traps. I’m using this book and we’re trying to warn ourselves from the same traps, so we don’t fall into some of those things. There was a continuous redefining God and what worship is to be. We’ve described that in our context, we have a cross up here. In their day, they had the worship of Yahweh, the God that brought them out of Egypt and made them into a nation, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and on and on. So they would worship Yahweh.

But over time they decided that they didn’t just want to worship Yahweh. All the other nations around them had other gods, as well. So they decided, “Maybe if we worship Yahweh and the other gods, we’ll get like double, triple love. We’ll get triple the blessings. We’ll get it all.” So they began to bring in things like Baal worship. They began to bring in things like Asherah poles. They never took down the cross, so to speak. They just started adding other things to their worship.

What they didn’t realize is that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is a very jealous God. Not in the petty, junior high type jealousy. But in the idea of a woman who’s married to a man and all of a sudden he decides he wants to bring in other women to the relationship. The jealousy that she would feel for her husband would be righteous and right. Saying, “This is not right.” And God himself is the source of that righteous jealousy. God says, “No. I’m not going to stand here and let you add other gods to the worship of Me. You get Me or you get nothing.”

That’s ultimately what happened in Israel’s history. Jeremiah, as he was prophesying, he was called The Weeping Prophet because people kept going, “Eh, you’re annoying.” He kept prophesying and they were like, “Hey, throw him in prison.” He kept prophesy and they’d say, “Hey, put him in a pit. That way we can’t hear him anymore. Just leave him in a pit for a while.”

He was the weeping prophet because he was prophesying as he watched this unfold before his eyes, as people continued to practice idolatry and, ultimately the nation of Israel was completely destroyed, in just a few hundred years.

America, where are you? America, are you willing to listen? We’re coming up on a few hundred years. And where are we going to be?

I don’t know how to change America. I can pray for it, we can reach out, we can do all of those things. But what we really want to do is make sure none of those things show up inside our church, inside our fellowship and our family. So we’re going to preach about it.

Tim Keller wrote a book called Counterfeit Gods, as he was trying to help the church in America understand culturally what the idolatry of today is. Some of the things that he said is:

An idol is something we cannot live without. We must have it, therefore it drives us to break rules we once honored to harm others, even ourselves, in order to get it…

So it’s basically these things we used to hold as true and right, we now want these other things and these things are standing in our way, so we just kind of put those to the side. Maybe something like this right here (bible). It’s happening today. Sorry if that freaked you out super bad. Just trying to make a point. But it came out a little bit abrupt.

…An idol is anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give, anything that is so central and essential to your life, that should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.

The first thing that came to my mind was the song “Driver’s License.” Sorry. If you don’t know what that is, good. You’re good.

…If I have that, then I will feel like my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, and I’ll feel significant and secure.

The “that,” which he is referring to are the idols in our lives. Some people that I’ve been asking recently, “What are you seeing as the idols of our day,”:

“Comfort, convenience, safety and security.” Tyler Johnson, who’s a pastor here in Phoenix. He says, “Those are the idols of our day.”
Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, talks bout “Money, sex and power,” being the idols of our day.
Dan Riccio says, “Self,” (uh-oh, that one gets to the point), “Self is an idol in our day. Sex, money, power, acclaim, security,” are the idols of our day. We want those things even more than we want God.We’re willing to compromise even what God has asked of us in order to get those things.

Then one of the things that I feel has been important for me to bring out, and this is just me, I only came up with one, those other guys had a bunch of items, but our desires. I think that’s the idolatry of America today. But I think that’s the idolatry that’s sneaking into our churches. Somehow we’re allowing our desires to dictate what is right and wrong.

You hear it in society. “You do you.” You know, whatever you want, that’s what you should be, that’s who you should be. But our desires do not belong on the throne of our lives. That’s one of the reasons why we keep this cross up here. Yes, to remind us of what Jesus did for us, the sacrifice that he paid so that we never have to fear God ever again. We never have to fear death ever again. But also as a reminder to us that ninety-nine, (I’ve been saying ninety, I’m going up to ninety-nine now)—ninety-nine percent of following Jesus is denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him. Denying ourselves means: Do not give in to disordered desires. We are constantly battling between what is a desire that is within us that is of God, and what is a desire within us that is not of God. And we deny the ones that are disordered. And we live into the ones that are not. This is very hard stuff. It’s very hard stuff. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying, “Oh, just go do it.” It’s very hard stuff. And that’s why he was a weeping prophet.

So 1 Kings 11. Let’s jump in here:

11 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.
Idolatry. He called it love.
3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
7 On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 8 He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.

Wow. We’re in a different place here. Last week we were reading 1 Kings 3, where Solomon prays this beautiful prayer. God is asking Solomon, “I’ll give you anything. What do you want?” And instead of asking for all the idolatry-type things, Solomon says, “God, can you give me a heart that listens to you? I don’t want to even have a heart that knows the truth, so to speak, because then I might put myself on the throne and decide what is true and right.” He said, “Could you just give me a heart that listens to you, that can hear you? Because you’re the only one that sees clearly. You’re the only one that should be on the throne.”

Hallelujah! It’s a beautiful, beautiful prayer. We should be praying it every day because we live in a crazy world.

And then we get to see the display of that, where Solomon was able to bring absolute justice, beautiful, righteous justice into a very troubling, street-level justice issue between two prostitutes and one baby. And it was just awesome. And everyone who got to see it was so refreshed that justice and truth could happen in our day. And it was just awesome.

Then, that’s chapter 3. Chapter 3 through 10 you just get to see that Solomon’s bringing out the wisdom. He’s executing justice. He’s ordering Israel in such a way that is causing the most flourishing and freedom for everybody there. The nations around them, instead of warring with them, they send delegations to sit at the feet of Solomon, just to listen to what he might have to say, so that they could experience a little bit of the freedom and flourishing that came through the Judeo ethic.

Solomon builds the temple for the Lord. Solomon builds a palace for himself. Solomon built a wall around Jerusalem. And it starts to describe all of the grain that was brought to Solomon every day because of all the fruitfulness of all the fields. Then it describes all of the flour that was brought in for his table as they made all the food for all the people. Then he talks bout all the gold that was brought in as tribute from other nations, and the wealth and the prominence and the prosperity. It was amazing. Actually, the title of the last chunk of scripture in chapter 10 is “Solomon’s Splendor.” It’s beautiful what the Lord had done, and what Solomon and the people of Israel were experiencing.

And then the weeping prophet, who’s recording for us a little bit of what happened, he says, “However, Solomon loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter.” There was a disordered desire within Solomon that was not in line with decrees and statutes and commands of God. And Solomon went for it.

Maybe he thought: I’m doing everything else the Lord is asking me to do. What’s the problem with this one little one? He wasn’t willing to deal with the “little foxes” like we talked about two weeks ago.

And I don’t think that when Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter, the first one, I don’t think he thought, All right. One down and 999 to go. I don’t think that was the vision that he had. I don’t think he thought, I’ll marry Pharaoh’s daughter and then I’ll marry a whole bunch of others. Just like those who get married don’t come to the altar and profess their vows to each other thinking, Maybe. Even though half of them, so to speak, end in divorce. I don’t think half of them are going, Yeah, we’ll see how this goes.

But little foxes come in and then other little foxes, other little foxes. So Solomon basically made one decision of compromise, sexually. And it led to another and another and another and another and another and another and another. Because sin is never satisfied. Sex is never satisfied. And many of us sitting in this room or listening online can think about the one time we made a compromise and how many more compromises it led to, until, ultimately, you’re in bondage.

Solomon, the wisest person of all—he fell in this way. And he ended up with a thousand wives. Well, seven hundred of royal birth wives, and then three hundred concubines, which are basically illegitimate wives. Because he decided to go for one.

Not only that, but then he decided to keep those wives happy. He started building high places of worship. He built the temple for Yahweh and then he started building temples for all the other gods. Just in case you don’t quite understand historically what it means to build a high place of worship for another god, the gods that were described in here—basically what was happening was Solomon built the correct form of Yahweh and a temple for that. Then he built these other temples.

These other temples, a lot of them had to do with fertility, these gods. It was an agrerian society. So if you wanted your lands to be fertile, if you wanted your family to be fertile, your wives to be fertile, then you would pray to these gods and they would cause your lands to be fertile, which was a really important deal when you’re trying to grow stuff. And your wives to be fertile was really important if you want to survive—have people to work the fields, maybe.

So a lot of these gods had this kind of concept. “If you worship me then you will be prosperous. You’ll be fertile.” But what they required as worship was for you to give up your sexuality, to give up your virginity. Practicing worship for these gods, had oftentimes going and linking yourself with a temple prostitute of some sort. Or giving up your virginity to one of these priests or priestesses. And if you offer that sacrifice, then this god will bless you with fertility. Sex became rampant.

Then, sad to say, others of these gods were gods that actually required human sacrifice. One tradition talks about the god Molek described here as this statue of iron that had a head of an ox of some sort. He would have his arms out and then inside the belly was this hollowed out thing where they would build a fire. That fire would warm up the iron and warm up the hands until it was red hot. Then they would come and lay their babies on his hands and watch their babies burn up as a sacrifice so that they could be fertile.

This is what Solomon produced in Israel. And Israel never recovered until it was destroyed. And if we don’t think we have a sex problem in America, if we don’t think we’ve created an idol out of sex and the compromise and the giving of ourselves in all these different sexual ways, we’re so blind. And, sad to say, what Solomon probably didn’t even know until he saw it was the sexual kind of reality of all this idolatry ultimately led to the killing of babies. If we don’t think we have that problem in our society, we’re blind as well. Our lust, our giving over to sexual desires that are disordered and outside the context of scriptures, has not led to a little, it’s led to a lot of damage for our society. Sad to say, it’s led to a lot of damage for a generation of unborn.

And we get to see it in Solomon’s day and you get to hear the weeping prophet Jeremiah say, “Please wake up.” We get to read the scriptures and there’s so much detail about sex in the Bible. And whenever sex is done outside the context of one man and one woman, it does not lead to anything good. It leads to destruction. And most often it’s not even the destruction of the person, it’s the destruction of the people that come after them.

The scariest thing about sin is you get to choose your sin, but you don’t get to choose the consequence. And even scarier than that is you don’t get to choose who gets the consequence. Most often it’s the ones that go after you. It’s the ones who you love the most that suffer. That’s true in Solomon’s day, as well.

Now you see why I’m thankful that people keep showing up. I’m just saying things and…yeah.

This is our reality. This is us. We read about Solomon and you’re like, “Yeah, that’s me, except for all the rich and smart stuff.” The way Paul describes it in the New Testament, is he actually describes a war going on inside of us. He uses the word war when he describes the battle between our spirit and our flesh. Our ordered desires and our disordered desires. It’s a war. It’s a challenge. It’s a difficulty. It’s something that causes pain and frustration and agony and sleepless nights and prayers and groanings within us.

If we’re honest, we all know that war. We have a nature inside of us that was given to us from Adam that wants to go against the things of God. And those of us who have given our life to Christ, we now have the Spirit inside of us who is compelling us to go toward the things of Christ. But it’s a war. It’s a battle.

Just the other day I was with a family, and one of their daughters who is young, it was so funny because she wanted to say something that was going to be like gossipy. She wanted to say something about what everyone was saying about this person; and the mom was like, “No.” And she was like, “Well, let me just…” “No!” “But, what…” “No!” It was just like, what is happening here? She could not keep it in. It was like she needed to say this juicy morsel of gossip so bad. And her mom was just cutting it off. And I was like, This is so interesting. Then it was funny because she finally stopped and the mom was like, “As soon as we go inside later she’s going to still say it.” Like she can’t help it. It’s the way it is within us. It’s alive in us. It was alive in Solomon.

That is truth. All that we’ve been saying these last few weeks, this is the truth we need to hear. God is setting before us a blessing and a curse. If you walk in this way you will be free. You will flourish in the things of God, and you will be setting up your children and the generations to come for prosperity and goodness in the Lord.

This is true. We have to hear this. We have to know this. But, thanks be to God that there’s more to the story to who our God is. He’s full of truth and he’s full of grace. And as I was reading, I stumbled across something that I want us all to hear. It’s so important. I’m so excited about this.

9 The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. 10 Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. 11 So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. 12 Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him, but will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”

So God visited Solomon again, finding him in all of this idolatry, going from a discerning heart to a divided heart, leading his people into all of this disgusting, detestable idolatry, paving the way for pain and agony for his children and the children of Israel. And God comes to him because he hates sin and what it does. He says, “Solomon, I’m going to have to punish you and I’m going to tear the kingdom away from you. Nevertheless, I’m not going to do it in your lifetime, for the sake of David. But I’m going to tear it from your son. Yet, I’m not going to tear it all from him, for the sake of David.”

If God was just all about truth, Solomon would be over. And to be honest, humanity would be over already, as well. But the God of the Bible is very peculiar. The God of the Bible is very scandalous, because there’s this razor’s edge to his character that’s described in Exodus 34. He is for sure not going to leave the guilty unpunished. But he is also abounding in mercy and kindness and faithfulness. And he loves to forgive.

In this chapter we get to see the nature of God. He’s disgusted and heartbroken over the idolatry and what it’s going to produce and what it’s going to cost—not just for Solomon, but for his children. And that stuff does play out. There are consequences to sin every single time. There is pleasure in sin for a season, but then it’s destruction. And sad to say, it’s not just destruction for you. It’s also for the ones you love. But, at the same time, God always is full of grace and mercy.

Here it is in the Old Testament. We see a little bit of a picture of a New Testament principle. When God says, “For the sake of David, Solomon you’re going to escape punishment. For the sake of David, Solomon, the promise that I made that David will always have someone sit on the throne will remain intact. And, sure enough, that promise did remain intact all the way until there was one born of the seed of David, or the line of David. His name was Jesus. He’s become King that reigns forevermore.

What the New Testament picks up right there is kind of bouncing off this. For the sake of David, Solomon escaped punishment and received the promise. And for the sake of Jesus Christ, everyone who believes in him escapes punishment and receives the full promise of God. This is the way Paul says it in Romans 5:

18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man…

Now, Paul’s talking about Adam, but you could also talk about Solomon—or you could put your own name in there.

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. 20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Message translation (MSG) says it this way:

18-19 Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, …

That’s you and me and Adam and Solomon.

…another person did it right and got us out of it….

That’s Jesus.

…But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

For the sake of David, Solomon escaped punishment and the promise stayed intact. And for the sake of Jesus, you and I, who have the same heart as Solomon, you and I who have stories of divorce, you and I who have stories of sexual immorality, you and I who have story after story of compromise, of little foxes, you and I that can think of all the times we blew it, which led to all the times we blew it, you and I who have no right to escape the punishment for our sins, and you and I who have no right to the full promise of God, which is that we are co-heirs with Christ of everything.

The promise of God is that you and I get everything that God wants to give Jesus. You and I get to experience the full realization of the promise of God, which comes in “kingdom come.” You and I get to know the resurrection life that Jesus brought into our world. And you and I also get to know the redemption that God can do, where he even takes our most heinous and disgusting sins and produces something good through them.

This is the scandal. The more you sin, the more God’s grace comes to you. The more you sin, the more God’s forgiveness is for you. In fact, God, in some ways Paul is saying, go ahead and try him if you want. Go ahead and test it if you want. You cannot outdo God’s love, grace and forgiveness. Even the sins you haven’t committed yet God has already provided grace and forgiveness for that. Your unrighteousness, no matter how hard you try, or no matter how badly you fail because you’re trying to do right, will never be more powerful than the righteousness and forgiveness and grace of God.

The very next thing Paul is saying after this is: Should we sin that grace may abound? God forbid! But he has to say that because, basically, he was saying the more you sin the more grace will abound. But he said don’t go that way because you also need to understand that your righteousness can produce life just like your wickedness can produce death. So be about the righteousness.

But when you fall and when you fail, and all of us sitting in this room or sitting at home, we are right now before God sinners. We are right now before God facing the wrath that he has against sin because we’re sinners. Yet, if we link ourselves to Christ, then he will come and, instead of giving us the punishment, he’ll apply it to the cross where Jesus took it. Instead of disqualifying us from the promise, he’ll apply the blood of Jesus to us, which includes us into the promise. This is the scandalous mystery of God’s grace that is for you and me, no matter what we have done, and the truth is, no matter what we’re going to do.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6, says, Don’t you know that you are temples of the living God? His Spirit is inside of you. And if you were going to go join yourself to a prostitute, in some sick way you would be joining together God and the prostitute. You need to understand this is what you are doing.

As I was kind of unpacking that in my mind, and as we were singing that song about Egypt today, I just felt the Lord was saying, “David, the ones you’re praying for, the ones you know that are filled with my Spirit and yet they’re kind of going off,” he said, “I want you to know that I’m going with them.” It broke my heart. Not because of what these people are doing in their foolishness or deception, but because of how much God loves them. That he’s willing to even go into the sickness, into the depravity, into the detestable things in order to be one step away from them, so that the minute they turn around like that prodigal, he’s right there with open arms.

Basically, he was saying, “Hey, David, my holiness can handle whatever sin someone might throw at me.” There is a lot more to unpack there and we don’t have the time. But I just want you to know that God is with you, and he will go to the ends of the earth. He will go into whatever you take him into in order to be one step away from your salvation and your redemption, and to get you back into the promise that he so longs to give you and the generations after you.

Let’s pray. It’s always important for us to remember that when we say, “Let’s pray,” at Living Streams we don’t necessarily mean let’s say some more words. Prayer really is more about listening than talking. So I want to create this time of response right now where we can listen to the Spirit of God and see what he’s saying to the church today. His Spirit alone knows how to make correct application in each of our lives. The Spirit alone knows how to bring conviction instead of condemnation into our hearts. So please don’t hear anything I have to say. Just listen to what the Spirit is saying.

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