Pick a Character, Write Yourself in: Part 1

 

Folks, this is going to be a long one, Maybe the longest post I have ever written, but I think the message is important.  It is also going to be one of several because there are several characters we are going to look at.  This Bible story is one that I believe was given as a generic template that we can write ourselves into any character in it because, after the king is identified so we can have perspective, no character is mentioned by name.  Even Jeroboam is called, 'the King' after we know where we are in history.  The story is found in 1 Kings 13 and I'm going to give a little background and then include the passage.  

David was the beloved king of Israel.  When He died, his son Solomon ushered in the 'Golden Age' of Israel.  The Bible says that gold and silver were as abundant as stone in Jerusalem during Solomon's reign.  Solomon's son, Rehoboam, became king after him and it was the abundance of Solomon that caused Rehoboam problems.

The people asked Rehoboam to lighten the burden of taxation his father had placed on them.  Rehoboam asked them to return in three days for his decision.  He asked the old men that had counseled his father, Solomon, for advise.  They told the king that if he would be good to the people and act as a servant to them that they would love him and always be his loyal subjects.  

Rehoboam rejected the advise of the old men and sought the council of his buddies, the guys his age that he had grown up with.  They told the king that he should tell the people that if they though his father was bad, just wait and see what he would do to them.  Of course, this is exactly what Rehoboam did.

It just so happened that, three days later when the people returned for the king's decision, Jeroboam was with them.  He had been raised up by Solomon because of his hard work.  A prophet had come to Jeroboam during Solomon's reign and told him that God was going to tear the kingdom away from Solomon because he had become an idolater.  Even in that, God would leave the Southern Kingdom with the descendants of David.  In this prophecy, God promised Jeroboam that, if he followed God and obeyed His decrees and demands, He would make Jeroboam an enduring dynasty as He did David and He would give Israel (the Northern Kingdom) to him. 

Jeroboam saw Rehoboam's harshness as the catalyst for rebellion, and it was.  Everything went according to plan.  God gave the Northern Kingdom to Jeroboam.  Unfortunately, this is where Jeroboam veered from God's plan.  He figured that if the people in the north still had to go to Jerusalem to worship and for the festivals, they would turn their backs on him and return to Rehoboam.  So, he set up golden calves in Dan in the north of his kingdom, and Bethel in the south.  This story starts in 1 Kings 11:26 and goes through 1 Kings 12.  This brings us to our passage, and I'm going to include the entire 13th chapter of Kings from the New Living Translation:

1At the LORD’s command, a man of God from Judah went to Bethel, arriving there just as Jeroboam was approaching the altar to burn incense. 2Then at the LORD’s command, he shouted, “O altar, altar! This is what the LORD says: A child named Josiah will be born into the dynasty of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests from the pagan shrines who come here to burn incense, and human bones will be burned on you.” 3That same day the man of God gave a sign to prove his message. He said, “The LORD has promised to give this sign: This altar will split apart, and its ashes will be poured out on the ground.”

4When King Jeroboam heard the man of God speaking against the altar at Bethel, he pointed at him and shouted, “Seize that man!” But instantly the king’s hand became paralyzed in that position, and he couldn’t pull it back. 5At the same time a wide crack appeared in the altar, and the ashes poured out, just as the man of God had predicted in his message from the LORD.

6The king cried out to the man of God, “Please ask the LORD your God to restore my hand again!” So the man of God prayed to the LORD, and the king’s hand was restored and he could move it again.

7Then the king said to the man of God, “Come to the palace with me and have something to eat, and I will give you a gift.”

8But the man of God said to the king, “Even if you gave me half of everything you own, I would not go with you. I would not eat or drink anything in this place. 9For the LORD gave me this command: ‘You must not eat or drink anything while you are there, and do not return to Judah by the same way you came.’” 10So he left Bethel and went home another way.

11As it happened, there was an old prophet living in Bethel, and his sons came home and told him what the man of God had done in Bethel that day. They also told their father what the man had said to the king. 12The old prophet asked them, “Which way did he go?” So they showed their father which road the man of God had taken. 13“Quick, saddle the donkey,” the old man said. So they saddled the donkey for him, and he mounted it.

14Then he rode after the man of God and found him sitting under a great tree. The old prophet asked him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”

“Yes, I am,” he replied.

15Then he said to the man of God, “Come home with me and eat some food.”

16“No, I cannot,” he replied. “I am not allowed to eat or drink anything here in this place. 17For the LORD gave me this command: ‘You must not eat or drink anything while you are there, and do not return to Judah by the same way you came.’”

18But the old prophet answered, “I am a prophet, too, just as you are. And an angel gave me this command from the LORD: ‘Bring him home with you so he can have something to eat and drink.’” But the old man was lying to him. 19So they went back together, and the man of God ate and drank at the prophet’s home.

20Then while they were sitting at the table, a command from the LORD came to the old prophet. 21He cried out to the man of God from Judah, “This is what the LORD says: You have defied the word of the LORD and have disobeyed the command the LORD your God gave you. 22You came back to this place and ate and drank where he told you not to eat or drink. Because of this, your body will not be buried in the grave of your ancestors.”

23After the man of God had finished eating and drinking, the old prophet saddled his own donkey for him, 24and the man of God started off again. But as he was traveling along, a lion came out and killed him. His body lay there on the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside it. 25People who passed by saw the body lying in the road and the lion standing beside it, and they went and reported it in Bethel, where the old prophet lived.

26When the prophet heard the report, he said, “It is the man of God who disobeyed the LORD’s command. The LORD has fulfilled his word by causing the lion to attack and kill him.”

27Then the prophet said to his sons, “Saddle a donkey for me.” So they saddled a donkey, 28and he went out and found the body lying in the road. The donkey and lion were still standing there beside it, for the lion had not eaten the body nor attacked the donkey. 29So the prophet laid the body of the man of God on the donkey and took it back to the town to mourn over him and bury him. 30He laid the body in his own grave, crying out in grief, “Oh, my brother!”

31Afterward the prophet said to his sons, “When I die, bury me in the grave where the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones. 32For the message the LORD told him to proclaim against the altar in Bethel and against the pagan shrines in the towns of Samaria will certainly come true.”

33But even after this, Jeroboam did not turn from his evil ways. He continued to choose priests from the common people. He appointed anyone who wanted to become a priest for the pagan shrines. 34This became a great sin and resulted in the utter destruction of Jeroboam’s dynasty from the face of the earth.

Today, we are going to look at the King in this story.  He is the only one whose identity we can be assured of, but throughout the story, he is referred to as 'the King'. 

He was in the process of establishing a false religion for God's people.  Remember, God had promised him a dynasty that would rival the beloved King David, but this king was throwing it all away.  He wasn't thinking with eternity in mind.  

I believe that the King was trying to institute the worship of Yahweh by setting up the golden calves.  Yahweh was known as the 'Bull of Israel' and if you read the story of the  story of the Golden Calf in Exodus, you will see what I mean.  Even after forging the idol, the people sat down to a feast to honor Yahweh.

The problem, beside the obvious that "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," God prescribed the proper way to worship Him and it was to be done in Jerusalem in the Temple where He had put His name forever (2 Chronicles 33:7).  You cant just come before the Lord any way you want to.  As we say today, "Not all roads lead to God."  And, not all ways of worship were acceptable, not even close.

Jeroboam really had nothing to lose by letting the people journey to Jerusalem for the feasts.  He had been given God's word that He would be King of the 10 tribes, and it had come to pass.  All he had to do was trust God's word.

Then, when a man of God travels from Judah to prophesy against what was going on, the king stretched out his had against the man of God and called for his arrest.   As we see in the passage, his hand dried up, paralyzed, withered (depending on the translation you use).

The king instantly realized that it was God that had done this because he asked the man of God to pray that his hand would be restored.  If he really believed in the golden calf whose altar he was consecrating, why didn't he just pray himself.  After all, he was offering the incense, a task reserved for Levitical priests in Jerusalem.

So, who of us can plug ourselves into 'the King' character.  I can see several ways he represents us.  The first is his failure to believe God.  He doesn't just not believe God in the abstract.  He had been given a prophecy that he had seen fulfilled and he still didn't believe.

It's worse than that.  He doesn't just not believe, he constructs his own belief system to justify himself.  This is one of the most common perspectives you encounter if you try to lead a person to the Lord.  They will say, "I'm a good person," or "The god of my understanding..." or some other nonsense. 

This is what the Bible says (the undisputable Word of God, the Truth, the Sharp Sword).  

There is non righteous, not not one (Romans 3:10).

For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him (Jesus) the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).

These verses bring us to the whole point.  We can't do it our own way.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No man can come to the Father but by Him (John 14:6).

We all have been given a promise by God, to be a child of the Kingdom just like the King in our story was promised a kingdom.  We all have the opportunity to walk in the fulfillment of that promise because we saw the fulfillment at the cross, just like the King saw himself walk into the promise to be king.  But we can't lose sight of the basis of that promise.  The basis is the word of God.  

What did God say about it?  That is the way we should be walking.

OK, I think I'm done with the King in the story.  The next character we will look at is the Man of God that went up from Judah.  How might his story apply to us?