Series: A Kingdom Divided
March 21, 2021 - Mark Buckley

Well, good morning, Living Streams. It’s a joy for me to be with you guys today. I want to say a special hello to the Grand Canyon students, because it’s a big weekend, you guys having your team at the big dance. We’re proud of you. It was a little difficult yesterday but to get into the dance is one thing. But actually, dancing is a whole different ball game, right?

I also want to say hi to the online community. I’ve been part of the online community for the past year. My wife had a heart transplant and we had to keep a big social distance. But there’s nothing like being back in live church! It’s a whole different ball game.

I was literally weeping this morning as we prayed before the first service. The Holy Spirit was ministering in a powerful way. We’ve got an awesome team of people in this church. If you don’t know the pastors personally, Veronica Morrison, Faith Cummings, Kurt Cotter, Arthur Le, some of these guys and gals are wonderful. And our elders are wonderful men of God. If you have a chance to get to know them, you’re going to find even more of God’s kingdom in this place than you’ve ever experienced before.

I’m going to be talking today about What I Learned from the Kings. At the end of the service we’re going to have communion. If you’re online, go get your bread, go get your cup. If it’s too early for wine, get some juice, whatever. We’re going to take communion. It’ll be good.

I’m going to give you lessons from three different righteous kings—things that have stuck with me over the years. Even the righteous kings were flawed. The first part of this message is going to be a little bit dark at times, a little bit politically incorrect at times; but if you stick with it, it’ll be worth it in the end,

First lesson from the kings:

1. Immorality has consequences for everyone.

Looking at the life of Solomon. Solomon was a king who pleased God from the time he began. He was a young guy. He knew that he needed wisdom. He asked God for wisdom and the Lord said, “I’m going to give you wisdom. And because you weren’t asking for much more than that, I’m going to give you wealth, I’m going to give you power, I’m going to give you more than you ever anticipated.”

Then it says in 1 Kings 11,

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter…

which was his first wife.

Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 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. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 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.

Let’s pray:

Father, I ask that you’d help me speak this word with clarity and power and that your grace will minister and that your kingdom will come more fully in our lives than ever before. In Jesus’ name.

So Solomon went from being this wonderful young guy with a heart for God, who gained wisdom, who gained understanding, who understand how flowers worked and plants grew, and how cities should be built, and aqueducts, and how an army should be formed, and his palace had such great order that people came and were amazed at what God did through Solomon. He built this magnificent temple and overlaid it with gold. It was a phenomenal place.

But as he wanted, in the lust of his heart, more and more women—it wasn’t just one wife that was beautiful, it wasn’t just two, it became seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines, which were basically sex slaves. There’s no other way to put it. It occupied his heart. His heart became dark. And his latter years he did not leave the legacy of blessing. The kingdom got divided because his heart was dark, and his son followed his dark ways and took unwise counsel.

I have a deep concern for our society today. I watched my own dad’s life turn dark because of immorality. I watched my pastor’s life become dark because of immorality. I saw the consequences in our family. I saw the consequences in the ministry I was part of when I was a young guy. It grieved my heart.

And today we’re having an explosion of immorality that is like none other. Now, in the sixties, we had free love, sex, peace, rock ’n roll and partying, basically. But the media, for the most part, was trying to warn people that it wasn’t going to end well. If you go to Height Ashbury and see the fruit of the hippie movement, you’ll see the burned out skeletons of people, those who are still alive. You see the bad fruit of that lifestyle.

But today, Kristina and I were watching Netflix the other day. And, a quick aside, thank you for those who have prayed for my dear wife. She’s doing much better. She’s getting stronger. Her transplant is working really good and we really appreciate your love.

So we were watching Netflix and it says in the upper corner “Language and Smoking,” you know, so keep your eyes out. If somebody smokes, that could really infiltrate your heart and make you want to go smoke or something like that, or you might say a bad word too. It says absolutely nothing about the fact that one guy after another in this show is sleeping with whatever woman he can get his hands on. And women are in bed with other women. The whole thing is rampant immorality. That’s normal. It’s being promoted in our society.

And then people act shocked when a guy down in Atlanta goes and kills eight people. Now that is tragic. And you know, if you do the back story on the guy, he was part of a bible-believing church. And he took a very Old Testament approach to try to get rid of his sin. You know? He was enslaved by his sin. He called himself a sex addict. Well, Jesus said that those who sin become slaves to sin. There is an addiction factor, because it doesn’t provide fulfillment. It provides degradation. So he took an Old Testament approach, kills eight people, which spreads fear and grief and pain.

Whether you try to gain a political solution through violence, a moral solution through violence, or you’re just being an angry person, that does not produce the righteousness of God. We’re here to proclaim the kingdom and to invite people into the kingdom. And we all have urges. We all have temptations. We all have desires that we have to say no to. The New Testament is about saying no to that which corrupts so you can say yes to the kingdom. There is something better that God has for each and every one of us that we don’t want to miss out on.

In 2 Kings 18, another king that you might not know as well as Solomon, his name is Hezekiah:

In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijah daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. … Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.

He was pleasing to God. He did what was right. He believed God. Yet we’re going to see in a moment that Hezekiah had all kinds of trials. Some people erroneously believe that, if you love God, if you do everything right, then you’re going to have a shield of protection, a hedge of protection, some kind of invisible bubble that’s going to prevent any bad news from actually affecting you, either from the outside or any kind of personal crisis. But that’s not the story of the Bible. That’s not the truth, folks.

What I would really urge you all to do is study, not just the New Testament, but the Old Testament, because you’ll get a more full picture of who God really is. So let’s look at what happens.

2. Even the righteous face crises.

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. So Hezekiah king of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand of me.”

So here is this righteous king and he still gets attacked. Major army of Assyria. Hundreds of thousands of people marching against Judah, capturing the outlying cities. And it says:

…the king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents[c] of silver and thirty talents[d] of gold. So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the temple of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace. At this time Hezekiah king of Judah stripped off the gold with which he had covered the doors and doorposts of the temple of the Lord, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

He made two false assumptions. One assumption was that it was because he did something wrong that he got attacked. He didn’t get attacked because he had done something wrong. He got attacked because there is evil in the world, and evil has a tendency to want to destroy those who are trying to do right. It says in the New Testament that all who live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. It goes with the territory. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers. They will be sons of God.” We need peacemakers because there’s conflict. There’s conflict because men have fallen.

So another false assumption he made is that, if he goes into a treaty with the king of Assyria, that the king of Assyria is going to honor his word. It’s like trying to make a pact with the devil. You try and make a pact with the devil for your success or for your protection or whatever, and it’s a temporary deception that leads to further bondage.

Neville Chamberlain, in the late 1930’s, tried to make a pact with Adolph Hitler. The pact was this: we will let you have Austria, we will let you have part of Czechoslovakia, but that’s as far as you go. And Hitler goes, “Yeah. That’s as far as I want to go. We just want to reclaim the German-held territories from these other places and we’ll be good to go.”

Well, Chamberlain comes back to Great Britain, claims to the world, “We have a peace treaty. Hitler’s going to be fine.” And what happens? Within months Hitler’s invading Poland and then he goes after Russia and the whole world is inflamed in war. Why? Because he had an intent from the beginning to dominate and control and make the Aryan race the predominate force on the world.

So, what happens to Hezekiah if you get into the story is that, after he gives the gold, after he gives the silver, the king of Assyria still attacks. He’s got the gold but now he wants complete and utter control. He’s a picture of Satan in the Old Testament.

Now, by the grace of God, Hezekiah and the people of the Lord are delivered from that. But that’s not the end of Hezekiah’s challenges. In 2 Kings 20, it says this:

In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”

Now we don’t know what his problem was. We don’t know if it was some kind of cancer, some kind of an infection. All we know is that sickness was a sickness unto death and Isaiah the prophet recognized it and said, “Buddy, make sure your will is good. Make sure you kiss your wife goodbye and say what you want to your kids, because this is the end.”

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

I know a little bit of what this feels like. In 1979 I was a young pastor. I had a wife and two kids and a growing church in Northern California. We had a day of fasting and prayer. I’m fasting on my own, in my office, kneeling before the couch in my office, and I heard a voice in my heart. The voice said, “I’m going to take you home.”

It totally caught me off guard. You’re going to take me home? This is God speaking? I’m going to die? What the heck is going on?

I literally got up off my knees, sat down on my couch, a few minutes later I left my office. I’m walking around, I’m jumpy. I’m irritated. Am I going to die? Was that God? Was that the devil? What happened,

Well, four days later my wife, Kristina, and I left on a trip. We borrowed a Volkswagen camper van. We left our boys with my brother and his wife. We were up in Northern California to go trout fishing, The Volkswagen camper dies and we have to push-start it. I had to gather a bunch of campers together to help me push-start it. Kristina’s in the driver’s seat. We push it to get it going and and it doesn’t start. Then it turns out she had the key off, which was a little embarrassing. So we push it again. There were about five of us. We push it as hard as we can. She pops the clutch and it doesn’t start, because she had it in reverse.

Now, my wife is usually very mechanical and very responsible. It was very irritating. And four of the guys helping me push the van walked away in disgust. So they leave and it’s just me and one other guy. Now we’re pushing with all our might. We push and she pops the clutch. It starts. And I’m hit with this massive headache. I mean, massive. And within a moment or two I’m literally laying in the dirt, throwing up. It was a bad scene. Kristina gets out of the van, says, “What’s happening?” I said, “I think I’m going to die, and you’d better get me to a hospital.”

She takes me to the hospital, where they do a spinal tap when they see the mess I’m in. They say, “You’ve got a brain bleed” They fly me in a private air evac down to Marin County, and basically said, “We don’t know if you’re going to live or die, but 90% of people that have this kind of brain bleed die.” Obviously, you know how that part of the story ends. I don’t die, by the grace of God.

But I had been in my office praying, I had been in my office crying after hearing that word that I was going to die. What comforted me is what happened to Hezekiah. This is what I want to say in my third point:

3. The mercy of God is amazing.

Isaiah said in verse 4:

Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.’”

In other words, what God is saying is, “I have a plan bigger than you, Hezekiah. The way you were living your life, you might have ended in death. But I have heard your plea for mercy and I’m adding fifteen years to your life.”

So when I had remembered that story, it really encouraged me. And when you’re twenty-nine years old, fifteen years sounds like a long, long time.

Let’s go to our final king. In 2 Kings 22, it says this:

Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. His mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.

So Josiah, at eight years old he becomes king. As he grows up, turns a teenager and into his twenties, he is the most dedicated king in the history of Israel. He tells them to rebuild the temple. The temple had fallen into disrepair. He finds the law of God in the temple and they begin to practice the law of God. They have it read to all the people. They begin to humble themselves. They reinstitute the Passover. They reinstitute the festivals. They reinstitute obedience to God. They finally rebuild the army. They rebuild the cities around Judah. And he has done a phenomenal job. Great guy. There’s about four pages of the Old Testament written about him. Then something happens.

4. Getting overextended has serious consequences.

2 Kings 23:

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Necho king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Necho faced him and killed him at Megiddo.

What’s happening? Josiah finds out that the arch enemy of Israel, which is Assyria, is going to be helped by Necho, King of Egypt. Josiah says, “I don’t want anybody helping Assyria. We hate those guys. They took the gold out of our temple years ago and we hate those guys.”

So he marches out in battle. He gets into a battle that God had not called him into. He gets overextended. I deal all the time with guys who are believers who get overextended and it’s not pretty.

So, 1994, Kristina and I are in a cabin in northern Washington. Kurt Cotter and I had flown up there because a young man in our church was in a coma. He had rolled his car over at a Christian camp. It had settled to the bottom of a pond. He was almost brain dead. He had been in a coma for several days. We went up there to pray for him, to ask God to heal him.

Two years before that, our oldest son had drown. Now, this kid, Daniel Murrow, we had helped raise for three and half years while his dad was in prison. So he was really close to our family. He was the oldest of six kids who lived next door to us. They were in and out of our house all the time. We loved these guys. We were praying over Daniel, asking God to heal him.

On the way up there, I had told Kurt, “I’m in trouble.” I had been in Alaska, trying to minister to some pastors whose kids were killed in a car wreck. I had been in California at a missions conference, where the churches were having a battle with each other. I had been on a bunch of trips that left me very drained, one right after another. I had nothing left in the tank. Now I had an emergency. I was living my life right on the edge, trying to please God by serving him with all my strength all the time, every day, and leaving nothing behind. Now an emergency comes and I’ve got nothing to give. I’m so wound up I couldn’t even sleep.

When the elders found out about that, they literally had me sent to a mental hospital for two weeks. Then to a treatment for another two weeks. I want to just tell you, if you’re the senior pastor of a church and you get sent to a mental hospital, it does not look good on a resume. Do you know what I mean? It’s not something you want to brag about to your friends or put in your newsletter. You’re hoping nobody’s going to find out. Yeah. Good luck with that.

“Where’s Mark? I haven’t seen him for a few weeks.”

“Well, you know how those things go, don’t you?”

Nobody ever gossips or anything. Nevertheless, I was out of the pulpit for four months. And our church held together. Living Streams held together because of love and because of mercy. They loved us. We loved them. And the fruit of the church has been better than ever. But I had to learn a really painful lesson.

I want to tell you how I ended up in that mental institution. I ended up there because, one night when we were at that Christian camp after we had prayed for Daniel all day long, I was trying to go to sleep. David Stockton’s parents were sharing this bungalow with us They were asleep. Kristina was asleep. My son, Phil, was in there. He was asleep. And I feel like my heart is starting to race and beat so fast that I’m having a heart attack. I’m thinking maybe I’m dying or something like that. I hear fireworks going off in the distance and I realize it’s Fourth of July and there’s fireworks. It’s 1994. And, oh, by the way, 1994, the last time I thought I was going to die was 1979, that’s fifteen years ago, and that happened to have been on the Fourth of July weekend. My fifteen years is up! I’m not paranoid. I’m about to die. Literally, that’s what I thought. That’s what flipped me out.

So the mercy of God is amazing. I did not die. But…but the reason I had the mercy of God is because I am part of a really loving, supportive community. Not everybody has that benefit. A lot of people, when they have a breakdown, which is what I had, it takes years and years to recover from. And some people have a hard time ever recovering.

The Body of Christ is a healing place. Don’t ever let people tell you, “I don’t really need church because I’ve got all I need from God.” Well, you’ve got all you need from God until you have a crisis. And if you’re a believer, you’re going to have a crisis, believe me. You’re going to get attacked. There’s going to be health issues. There’s going to be stuff happen. There is no magic protection that’s going to guarantee that your family is always going to escape through the trials of life. You’re going to need your brothers and sisters, and they’re going to need you, too.

Now I want to close this message by talking about the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and a little contrast between the limitations of the righteous king and what Jesus does in our life.

In Revelation 19:11 & 16, it says:

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: king of kings and lord of lords.

King of kings and Lord of lords. Heaven was open and the apostle saw Jesus, the Word of God, alive and well and true. The Eternal Word through which all things are formed, all things are made, that which established the universe, literally became flesh and dwelt among us, he said, “And I got to touch him. I got to feel him.”

A couple of weeks ago, maybe a little less than that, I was over at a golf course, and I run into a guy who is a judge, who I’ve known for a long time, who was part of our church. And I said, “How’s it going?” And he said, “Well, did you know my golf clubs got stolen?” And I said, “No, I didn’t know that. Did you get any new ones?” And he goes, “No, no, as a matter of fact, one of the detectives caught the guy. He was fencing my golf clubs. And because he was fencing my golf clubs and they’re worth so much money, he’s got a class 4 felony. He’s going to prison.”

And then I’m like, “Oh, really?”

And he goes, “Yeah, but my driver, he gave away to somebody. So he’s making restitution. He’s paying me $17 a month for my driver.”

Now under normal circumstances, I’d say, “Yeah, they got the bad guy!” You know what I mean? We can’t let people steal golf clubs. What would become of people like me that like to play golf, if you just let them take golf clubs? You’ve got to send them to prison.

But that very day, I had heard about a lady taking a very different approach. We had a memorial service for Celia Clifton, the mom of Adriana Gruber, who is part of our staff. Celia Clifton heard from Adriana, when Adriana was a teenager, that when Adriana went on a particular day to get her car washed, somebody at the car wash stole a bunch of stuff out of her car. So she goes home and tells her mom right away, “Mom, I realized that somebody stole my stuff.”

Her mom says, “Which car wash?” She goes right down there. She marches down there. She’s this fiery little Mexican lady who loves Jesus. She tells the manager of the car wash, “I want to talk to all of your guys!”

“All of my guys/]?”

“Yeah. Someobody stole stuff out of my daughter’s car. I want to talk to all your guys.”

The guy literally shuts down the car wash, gathers twenty employees all together. And Celia begins to preach the gospel. She tells them that she knows that they’re sinners because we’re all sinners. She knows somebody’s a thief, but Jesus Christ came to die on the cross so thieves could be forgiven, so immoral people can be transformed, so people can enter the kingdom of God.

During the course of her message, one of the guys starts weeping and he confesses that he had stolen the stuff out of the car. And she leads him to the Lord and twenty of those guys pray to receive Christ. Then she goes to the manager of the car wash and says, “I do not want you to fire him. I want you promote him. You hear me? I do not want you to fire him. I want you to promote him because he’s honest and he’s going to be a man of God.”

So I wanted to say to my friend, the judge, “Hold on a second. There’s a better way than just sending the bad guys who steal your golf clubs to prison. There’s a better way. There’s a more powerful way.”

He can take those of us who have fallen and make us new. Jesus said, “there’s somebody more powerful than Solomon here.”

Solomon had people come from all over the world to hear his wisdom. And Jesus said what he could do was better. You know why? Because Solomon in his wisdom could find out which of the women is lying. But Jesus, in his power, can turn the liar into a truth teller.

Moses with his authority could have the adulterer put to death. But Jesus, with his authority, can turn the adulterer into a covenant keeper. There’s somebody more powerful than Moses here.

And here’s what Jesus had to say. Last point here.

5. The King of kings makes simple great.

Matthew 11:11

Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Greater than John the Baptist. Greater than Moses. Greater than Solomon. Who? Whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven. You may be least in the kingdom of heaven. You are aware that you don’t think right sometimes. You don’t act right sometimes. But you’re not to be disqualified because you weren’t qualified. None of us are qualified because we’re always thinking right we’re always acting right. We’re qualified by what Jesus has done for us, by his gift for us. And if you’re least in the kingdom, you’ve got an awesome gift. An awesome gift.

My sister is visiting from California this weekend. The last time she came here was over thirty years ago. Living Streams had about fifteen people. I was going door to door. I was doing everything I could to try and reach people. I was going to the parks. I reached a few people and brought them to church.

She came when she was having trouble. She stayed in our house with our four kids. She invited a friend to our church. And her friend brought her boyfriend, Ben. Robin brought Ben. Ben brought J.B.. J.B. brought his parents, Ewell and Betsy. Ewell and Betsy brought George and Mary Ellen. George was the head of surgery at Good Sam Hospital. Ewell was the head of the Shearson Leemon Hutton brokerage. Ben brought Steve Ontiveros, a pitcher for the Oakland A’s.

I had been exhausting myself, trying to do whatever I could. Katey shows up, starts inviting somebody and the whole church starts to grow. She had a gift from God. I don’t even know if she knew she had a gift from God.

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