Solomon, Rehoboam, and Jeroboam all treated God’s promises like something they could improve on or control on their own terms only to encounter the pavement courtesy of the black ice of sin. Our efforts end like that, but God’s faithfulness outlasts our failures.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
Misidentification and Spiritual Blindness The sermon opens with “misnamed” animals (electric eel, mountain goat, peacock mantis shrimp) as a picture of how easily we form wrong associations. Where in your own life or faith have you mistaken something for what it is not—especially confusing your own efforts or strategies for the true source of blessing and security? What are some modern “electric eels” we mistake for something they’re not?
The Danger of “Helping God” Both Rehoboam and Jeroboam treated God’s gifts like a “flat parking lot” they could improve or control—what the pastor calls “stabilizing the parking lot.” In what areas are you tempted to “add efficiency” or shore things up yourself rather than simply trusting the provision God has already given? What compromises do we make when we don’t fully trust His promises?
The Difference Between Jeroboam and Rehoboam’s Outcomes Jeroboam receives an almost identical dynastic offer to David’s, yet his line is extinguished while David’s continues. What does the difference—genuine relationship with the Lord versus mere lip service and self-protective religion—teach us about true faithfulness versus simply managing outcomes on our own terms?
From Judgment to Hope: The Lamp Metaphor God preserves a “lamp” for David even while judging the kingdom (1 Kings 11:36, 39). How does the sermon’s connection of that lamp image to God’s Word and ultimately to Jesus (John 1) reshape the way you read seasons of diminishment, failure, or delayed promise—both in Scripture and in your own story?
The Paradox of Human Responsibility and God’s Sovereignty The sermon emphasizes two equal truths: our actions genuinely shape our experience, yet they cannot derail God’s eternal plan. Which of those two truths do you personally find harder to believe right now, and how might resting in both free you to turn from self-reliance to deeper trust in Him today?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Well, I don’t have a box of maps today, I’m afraid. Jim took all the maps last week. No maps, but I do have a quiz. And so I’m going to show you some pictures of animals, okay? And here’s what I want you to do. I just want you to be thinking as you look at these animals, what is odd about them, okay?
So here’s the first one. Seems like there might be something fishy there. There’s an eel. I hear it’s an eel. Okay, so we’ll go with that for now. Okay, how about this one? Almost, getting close. I think I heard goat somewhere in here. Did I hear goat? Okay, there we are, mountain goat. Mountain goat, very good. We’re right on track here. And how about this one? How about do a little curveball here? Somewhat related. I guess we can’t get away with crustacean. Okay, okay. That is a peacock mantis shrimp, just for the record, yeah. Pretty impressive looking, isn’t it? Or she? Oh, good job, Ellie.
For all of you that got the quiz right, my hat’s off to you, it wasn’t on to begin with, but the oddity about this, other than maybe the peacock mantis shrimp, I mean, we all hear about electric eels, right? I think sometime probably, I don’t know, biology class and grade school are saying, oh, that’s pretty nifty. This creature is underwater that’s electrified, I mean, right? And then a mountain goat, well, that’s not too surprising. And then we at least know shrimp, right? But here is the odd thing about each of those. Does anyone know? Well, does anyone know what’s odd about those? Is there a common denominator here? There is a common denominator, yeah. Are you ready for it? You got it? No? I’m searching. No? Are they all off the— I don’t know if they could— They’re all sermon illustration. They’re all sermon illustration tonight, yeah, that’s true, that’s true, yeah. Okay, it’s solved, yeah, okay. No, there’s something else.
That electric eel, it isn’t an eel. That mountain goat, it isn’t a goat. And that peacock mantis shrimp, well, it’s not a peacock, it’s not a mantis, and it’s not a shrimp. You see, the funny thing about these animals, those are the common names that we use for them, but an electric eel, I found out, I did not know this, but an electric eel is actually more closely related to a catfish than an eel. So, you know, next time you go and eat catfish, just think it could be an electrifying experience. And the goat, the mountain goat, is actually more closely related to antelopes, and you can kind of see that in the resemblance, actually. The more I looked at it, I thought, you know what? It really doesn’t look much like a goat. And that’s because it’s not. It’s closer to an antelope. And so it goes. Same with our peacock mantis shrimp, as well.
People do eat it. Apparently, it’s a culinary delight in Japan to go with sushi, but it’s not a shrimp. I was thinking about that and how we get thrown off by we have a name of something, right? And the one that really rocked my world, I think, was electric eel. I mean, I just always thought that certain eels were electrified. And as it turns out, eels aren’t electrified. These things are sort of like catfish that we’ve called eels are electrified.
And a mountain goat? I mean, everyone knows. As kids, we know about mountain goats, but a mountain goat isn’t a goat. I mean, it’s just like, how can this be? The funny thing is, though, so often in life, we see something that is sort of semi-related, and it just becomes embedded in our minds that that’s the case.
And as we’re turning to 1 Kings 11 tonight, as we continue our journey through Scripture with a better map to the Messiah, and as we do, it strikes me how often it is that we look at actions in our lives, and they sometimes go well, right? You do the right thing, and the right thing happens, and we become convinced that what’s really guiding everything is what we do. But is that sort of like the electric eel analysis of life? In fact, it is. Let’s go ahead and pray that God would help us to see just how tonight.
Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. Would you please guide us and help us to see how — we get the connections wrong. Help us to instead see how the connections are truly, because in that we find your grace. Father, we need that desperately. We pray that in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Now, the first part in the misassociation is that our actions actually do have sway over our lives, and this is where we get thrown off. But let’s go ahead here. There’s a prophet speaking to Jeroboam. He’s not yet a king. He says, “Then,” he said to Jeroboam, “take ten pieces for yourself.” The prophet’s just torn up his cloak. “Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. See, I’m going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon’s hand and give you ten tribes. But for the sake of my servant David in the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe.
I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped the Ashtoroth, the goddess of the Sidonians, the Shamash, the god of the Moabites, and Moloch, the god of the Ammonites, and have not walked in my ways, nor done what is right in my eyes, nor kept my statutes and laws as David Solomon’s father did. But I will not take the whole kingdom out of Solomon’s hand. I have made him ruler all the days of his life for the sake of David my servant, whom I chose, and who observed my commands and statutes. I will take the kingdom from his son’s hands and give you ten tribes.”
What’s going on in the background here? Solomon, Solomon’s king at this point. He’s inherited an incredible kingdom from his father David, and now as he’s inherited it, he has been given so much more. The kingdom’s at its peak. And Solomon is given incredible wisdom and wealth, so he has everything a ruler could want. But what has Solomon done?
He’s increasingly compromised. We’re told in the story that as he takes a larger and larger harem of wives, it’s like he’s a collector of wives. He has all these wives that he’s marrying from different parts of the world, and they bring their gods and goddesses, and he says, “Oh, well, why not add to the different things I can do? We can encourage worship of all these different deities.” We see that Solomon’s forgotten exactly why he’s wise and powerful and inherited this incredible kingdom and the promise of being king. And I think to some extent, despite being the wisest man in the world, he’s forgotten that it actually matters that we’re faithful. It actually matters.
So Solomon compromises. Now, in the next chapter as we go over, Rehoboam compromises even more. What does Rehoboam do? Well, he says, “Everything that my father did to mistreat the people, I’m going to do it even more.” And I think he thinks he can get away with it. He looks at the situation and says, “You know, my dad did whatever he wanted, and it worked out. And if dad could do whatever he wanted and it worked out, then if I do whatever I want, it’ll work out too. So I’ll just do whatever pleases me. And what pleases me is to make sure that they know who is boss and who isn’t. And guess what? My shirt says boss. I’m in charge here.”
In that, it leads to the judgment that the prophet was foretelling to Jeroboam that Rehoboam will lose ten of the tribes. And he’s not going to be Thomas. He’s going to be king, but he’s not going to be king like his father was. In fact, no king of Judah throughout the rest of the time that there’s a place on the map, you can say it’s the kingdom of Judah, no king will have the glory that Solomon did. Because Rehoboam thinks it doesn’t matter. He can just do whatever he wants.
Now, it’s interesting, and we’re going to get to in a moment the fact that Rehoboam stays king of anything at all, but it would be unmistakable. By Chapter 14, so just a little further along in the story, what do we see? Not only has the kingdom been reduced, but even the wealth within that part of the kingdom has been reduced. As the Pharaoh comes up from Egypt and does a little garage sale, and he comes in and he takes whatever pleases him. So the kingdom’s shrunken and it’s impoverished.
And Jeroboam, a well-respected servant of Solomon, someone who had seen the good and the bad, he becomes instrument of judgment because he ends up being the leader of what’s then known as the northern kingdom or Samaria and the kingdom split. And God says, “If you’ll follow me, I’ll give you a line that’s handed down from generation to generation, just as you see with my servant David.”
But what happens instead? Jeroboam, despite knowing that he’s actually king because he’s an instrument of judgment and unfaithfulness to the Lord, he chooses to be unfaithful too. Take a look at verse 37. “However, as for you, I will take you and you will rule over all your heart’s desires. You will be king over Israel. If you do whatever I command you and walk in my ways and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and commands, as David my servant did, I will be with you. I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David, and I will give Israel to you.”
We’re having a slight technical difficulty here I need to go fix. I’ll be right back.
There we are. Sometimes the camera decides to get off the beaten path as well. Anyway, so Jeroboam is given the promise of a dynasty and he says, “Oh, well, this is pretty nice.” What does he do? Well, he looks at that promise and he becomes king. He can see that God is working there, but he says, “You know, I know that God said that worship should only happen in a designated place with the tabernacle and ultimately the temple now that’s been built in Jerusalem. I know that’s the only place anything should happen, but people are going to go down there and they’re going to see the other kingdom. And you know what they might do? They might say, ‘Huh, maybe I’d rather follow that king. Maybe they’d even realize that that king was the king of promise in the line of David.’ That could be dangerous. I’m going to set up worship and demand that people do worship up here even though the Lord’s forbidden it because I can’t risk that to my kingdom.”
The Lord said he could have a lasting dynasty. He says, “Maybe I need to help out the Lord. I’ll compromise here. I’ll do this.” And just like Solomon said, “Well, maybe I’d be happier if I have lots and lots of wives and we worship all the gods of those wives.” Jeroboam says, “Well, maybe I’d be happier. Maybe I’d be more secure if I shore up my dynasty by not being in any way dependent on that pesky southern neighbor of mine any longer.”
It’s kind of interesting if you try to play it out. What would a faithful northern kingdom have looked like? Because if you’ve read through the story of the Old Testament, faithful and northern kingdom, they just don’t go together at all. There’s occasionally a good king in the southern kingdom in Judah. There’s never a good king in the northern kingdom. And so it’s kind of almost impossible to even imagine. But imagine for a moment, even if it’s split now, there’s that judgment that there had been two kingdoms that testified faithfully to the Lord so the rest of the world looked and said, “I wonder why there’s these two kingdoms now. They don’t even like each other, but they love the Lord and they actually follow Him.” Wouldn’t that have been beautiful?
But Jeroboam won’t have it. He’s not going to do that. He is going to have it his own way. And so what does he do? He forms an alliance with Pharaoh, with Shishak, down in Egypt. And as he does that, there’s this really kind of incredible thing that happens. The people of Israel had escaped bondage from Egypt, but Jeroboam had escaped persecution from Solomon. One Solomon knew that Jeroboam was going to be the instrument of judgment by going to Egypt.
And so Jeroboam doesn’t look at Egypt as this evil place that does me harm, that did my people harm, that the Lord brought judgment down on. He sees Egypt as a useful vehicle for political power. And so he forms an alliance with the Pharaoh. And that leads into that further judgment to Judah as the temple is raided, as the treasures are taken away. And maybe even more than likely, I’m going to say this is not the case, but some commentators, because we don’t know exactly how the Pharaohs match up with the timeline, there’s even a slight possibility that this Pharaoh that Jeroboam allies himself with was actually Solomon’s brother-in-law, because one of his wives was the princess of Egypt. Now, I don’t think that’s the case, but just even the fact that Solomon chooses to ally himself with Egypt, intermarry with Egypt, and then Jeroboam decides that Egypt is a dependable ally.
All that, I mean, the irony here, that the God who rescued the people of Israel from Egypt, they’re now turning to Egypt rather than to the Lord. I mean, how could it be? But it looks secure, right? There are a lot of enemies out there. There are a lot of people and nations that could oppose you. And Egypt is eager at this point to expand in power, and it just seems useful.
And I think if you look at both Jeroboam and Rehoboam, they know that they’ve been given something by God, and they think that maybe they can just do whatever they want, and it doesn’t matter, because they’ve been given something by God. And so they do. It doesn’t work out quite how they thought.
Years ago, I was walking into the office of the church I was serving at. It was the middle of winter. And as I was pulling into the parking lot, my phone had rang. And so I parked the car, and I looked, and I was getting a phone call. It looked like it was what I needed to take. And I thought, no problem. It’s a nice, flat parking lot. I can walk from the car to the church building while on the phone, and I’ll already be ahead before I even get in the building. And so I’m carrying my briefcase and talking on the phone. And the next thing I know, my briefcase is on the ground. I’m on the ground. My phone, I did manage to hold it up so it didn’t hit the ground and crack a screen, but this nice, flat, secure-looking parking lot also happened to have some nice, flat, not-so-secure black ice on it sort of thing we have to worry about this time of year, right? And so as I’m walking across, focused on getting into the building, and it’s cold, and talking on the phone, doing all this, I was not looking to see that there was a slight sheen on the ground there. I just saw the promise of a nice, flat parking lot.
And in different ways, I believe that Jeroboam and Rieboam see a nice, flat parking lot. And they’re thinking, well, how can I make this more efficient now, right? In a cold winter’s morning where there could be black ice, I shouldn’t have been trying to make it more efficient. I should have just been trying to get into the building, but I was adding something onto it. And Rieboam, did he need to discipline the people more so that he could survive? Was his kingdom at risk of not having enough wealth or power? No, quite the opposite. They said, well, maybe I could have a little more. It’d be a little more efficient.
Jeroboam, did he need to make sure that people didn’t somehow become loyal to Judah because God might forget that he’d given Jeroboam a promise of a dynasty? And if he didn’t make sure that people compromised on worship so they didn’t go back into that southern kingdom at all, does he need to do that to make sure he didn’t lose power? No.
They both said, yeah, the parking lot’s flat. The Lord’s provided this nice, flat parking lot. I can go ahead and add something on top of it to make it better. And ironically, they both know that God does bring judgment, that God does have standards, that he does call people to faithfulness because they both, in different ways, saw it coming to Solomon. Rehoboam, as the son of Solomon, can look at what Solomon had, what’s happened now in judgment to his kingdom, how he’s being reduced down, and he doesn’t get it. And Jeroboam, even more clearly, can see what the Lord has done because he’s been the instrument bringing the judgment. What does he say? Well, you know, maybe I could do a little better. And to try to get that stable ground, to stabilize the flatness of that parking lot a little bit further, even though it’s already flat and it’s a parking lot, it’s not going anywhere. You don’t need to stabilize it.
They miss the blessing that is indelible because it’s from God, and they choose instead the earthly temporary blessing of their own wit. The fact that they had been successful to an extent, and if you’re a king, let’s make no mistake. If you’re a king, you’ve experienced success to an extent, right? Not, as far as I know, no one in this room has ever been a king or a queen. Correct me if I’m wrong, because I’d enjoy hearing about that. But I don’t think anyone here, probably no one watching online either. I don’t think King Charles is watching right now or anything like that. None of us have ever been royalty. And if you’ve reached that point, as both Rehoboam and Jeroboam have, they have experienced some sense of success.
But I think they looked at themselves to understand that. And so they equated their accomplishments, their faithfulness, for what provided them with success rather than the Lord’s blessing. And so here we see the conviction part of the story. Our success doesn’t equal that we’re faithful, doesn’t mean that we’re faithful. And what brings us success isn’t equivalent to faithfulness. But we could take the wrong thing from this story. We could say, well, look, Rehoboam and Jeroboam, they both had these promises of God. And if they had these promises of God and they lost them, then maybe God’s success, maybe his eternal plan, is dependent on whether I’m faithful or not. Is that what this is saying? No.
God’s plan happens despite our failures. Over and over again, that’s the story of Scripture. That’s why we need this map, because we keep turning off. Even as we look at the map, we keep turning off onto dead ends, and God redirects us people. On the one hand, we can forget that our actions do have sway over our experience of life and our own plans and how they play out. But we need to equally understand that our actions don’t have sway over God’s eternal plan.
Take a look at 1 Kings 11, 36. “I will give one tribe to his son, as to Rehoboam, so that David my servant may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put my name.”
Skipping down to verse 39, “I will humble David’s descendants because of this, but not forever.”
Our sins don’t destroy God’s eternal blessing. They don’t mess up God’s eternal plan. God is more powerful than whatever we can do.
And I think it’s so telling here that one of the promises of the Messiah is tucked right in the judgment of the Davidic line. David’s descendants, they’re the anointed line. They’re the line promised with the eternal dynasty. In other words, the line pointing to the Messiah. They’re being unfaithful. David, of course, is. Solomon is. Rehoboam is. We keep going. Yet right in the middle of it, what does God do? To make it clear that, yes, yes, we do need to be faithful. Yes, it matters if we’re faithful. No, it’s not what determines whether God’s plan works or not.
So I’m not going to take away the promise I gave to David. I gave it to him.
Is the Davidic promise going to be harder to see? Is it a lot easier to see God’s promise of a line that will last forever when there’s a kingdom that’s the rival of its peers and everyone’s looking and saying, “How does this little bit of land here along the sea, how does it become so wealthy and so respected and so powerful?” Well, that’s a lot easier. But it isn’t lost. Even when the Babylonians come and they take away the people and there is no actual earthly kingdom you can point to any longer, it isn’t lost because God continues to be with his people.
I think it’s interesting here, and depending on your translation, it may actually get rid of this. Some translations keep it, some don’t. But this phrasing of David’s dynasty being a lamp. First English translation I was looking at on this passage actually switched it to David’s line, and they have a little footnote. Well, that’s what it’s referring to as a line, and so that’s important. And that’s not untrue, but let’s not overlook that lamp metaphor.
Because you see, David’s line wasn’t just a line. It was a line to shine something, right? It was a line to provide light into the world pointing to what God was doing. And then when the kingdom starts to shrink and be diminished, you might say, “Well, it looks like the lamp’s going out.”
But throughout the ancient Near East, they would use this sort of metaphor talking about dynasties. They often thought the kings were even divine. And as it’s used there, it’s a hint. Because if you look at the diminished kingdom of Judah, or ultimately the extinguished kingdom of Judah—that’s just a little people existing at the pleasure of some foreign power to the extent that they do it all—it’s really hard to see how there’s a light shining pointing to the Lord.
But out of that line, something was coming, something beautiful. This lamp metaphor sound familiar? Psalm 119, 105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.” God’s word provides light.
And then how much more so when we get to the New Testament, right? Because we read in John chapter 1 what? That the word became flesh, that light dwelt in the darkness. And suddenly that seemingly impossible promise that the Davidic line keeps going when there isn’t even a kingdom, how does that work? Suddenly makes sense. Makes sense in the Messiah.
Jeremiah writes in Jeremiah 30, verse 9, “Instead they will serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.” Maybe someone read that promise ahead of time and thought, “Well, David’s going to come to life again?” Well, ultimately, yes, God is faithful to his people. He will restore his people. But it wasn’t referring to the David brought back from the dead. Actual King David from the time of the United Kingdom was somehow going to come back and rule the people again. So his line was the better, greater David was Jesus was.
And so in this destruction, the rubble of two promises of dynasties, one of which is totally extinguished in Jeroboam, because he never actually chooses to follow the Lord, and another one that is slowly diminished further and further in the line of Rehoboam, what do we find? We find God’s grace.
I like what John Wesley says. He says, “And at last the Messiah shall come, who shall unite together the broken sticks of Judah and Joseph, and rule over all the Jews and the Gentiles too.” From the time of Rehoboam until the time that Jesus comes, you have a completely divided kingdom to the extent that you can talk about a kingdom at all. The northern kingdom is wiped out more than a century before the southern kingdom finally loses its independence. They’re forced to intermarry. They’re basically, for all intents and purposes, extinguished fully. But in the midst of that, what do we see in Jesus? He comes and he ministers to the Samaritan, the descendants of that northern kingdom, and to the Jew, and to the beyond.
And suddenly we see a lamp that’s brighter than even David himself, as one whose message, his victory, will go all about the world. And all that’s promised right in the midst of the judgment.
To understand that, I think we need to ask a question. Why does Jeroboam’s promise end and Rehoboam’s promise continues? That’s kind of an interesting thing, isn’t it? You have two unfaithful kings. One gets to have his line just keep going, the other doesn’t. Did God not realize what he was promising when he promised to David? No, he knew exactly what he was promising.
The difference is that in David, there was someone who was terribly imperfect who had a relationship with the Lord. And we see time and again, even when it’s just this tiny little ember, this little spark, that God keeps reuniting that line and bringing back faithfulness until ultimately the most faithful one comes and lives everything that dynasty was supposed to do.
On the other hand, with Jeroboam, we never see that. David, Solomon, they do plenty of imperfect things. Jeroboam, he does plenty of imperfect things. The key difference is Jeroboam doesn’t have that relationship with the Lord.
And so what God has told him is, “If you will follow me, I’ll give you that line.” And Jeroboam says, “No, I’ll do lip service, I’ll look the part. I don’t really need to follow you, Lord. We’ll just do something sort of close. That’ll be good enough, right?”
And so it is even though you have two unfaithful men. And in some sense, in some ways, I’d say Jeroboam even seems like the less appealing of the two in that story of faithfulness God preserves that line. It’s not because Jeroboam can look and say, “Look, I’m better. I’ve done better things.” No, not at all. It’s because of what God has done and his faithfulness to his own promises.
Years ago, I was playing cards with some friends, and I went to use the facilities. And someone in that group—I’m not naming any names—but someone in that group thought it would be a good idea to cheat and to take my hand and mess it all up so that it looked—We were playing hearts. It looked like I could run. That’s the best thing you can do in hearts. It looked like I could run, except there was one card that looked improbably small that wouldn’t mess up a run, but actually would if you fixed the cards.
And so I came back out, and I get all excited. I’m going through running these cards, and I’m going through it until just—How could this happen? It just so happens this itty bitty little card trumps my card and is just over. And then the confession. And then the lights went out. Power didn’t come back on for like 12 hours.
Now, if you didn’t know better, you might think—and I should just leave it this way, actually, come to think of it. Don’t cheat on Tim. It’d be better if I was at someone else’s house, because then I wouldn’t be the one in the dark. But don’t cheat on Tim, because he’ll knock the power out of you, Chia.
Well, the thing is, I had nothing to do with the power going out. It just so happened, just so happened at the same time that the confession was coming out, a car lost control up the hill and ran to the electrical pole and took out the power.
Nothing to do with it, but it sort of looked like it. And I think in their own ways, Ria Bohm and Jeroboam, both are kind of feeling like the person who’s been cheated on but has the power to knock the lights out, right? Yes, I’m not a perfect card player. Yes, I’m not perfect in a lot of ways. But, boy, if people cheat on me, the power goes out, right? I’m king. They’re kings. And so I can do what I want, and it doesn’t really matter. Maybe it’s all about what I do. But I couldn’t cut the power.
It’d be an error if I started sort of going around people I knew we were going to cheat and tempting them to cheat, because I’ll just knock the power out when they cheat, and then they’ll learn the lesson.
And so, too, when Jeroboam said, you know, yeah, God’s giving me this, but I could cheat a little and make it better. And anyway, I’m the kind of person that could knock the power out, so it won’t really hurt.
But in the midst of that, there’s the promise. And here’s the thing, I think we need to hang on to this passage as it’s continuing to direct us on our course, on our map.
We can make an awful lot of things messy, and we’re going to. But we need to remember that we’re not so powerful to stop God. And whatever you’ve messed up, the places where you’ve chosen, we’ve all choose to act more like Rehoboam and Jeroboam at times. We choose to shore up things we don’t need to shore up because we don’t trust that God’s going to come through, or we think we can somehow get things better off if we do. Or we live like Solomon and we say, well, I have all this stuff and I’m following the Lord, but somehow I can enhance it by compromise. And then when we realize it’s coming down, we say, well, there’s nothing I can do. I might as well just keep going because there’s nothing that can fix this.
We need to remember we’re not so powerful. What we see in the line of David is that times throughout the Old Testament, there’s a hint of the redemption to come because at times one of those kings looks at the line that he’s descended from and says, yeah, my family is awfully messed up, but you know what, I can follow the Lord and it’s not too late to do so.
And for all of us, even when we’re just looking at our own lives and the messy string, the dynasty of sin that goes through our lives, we can say, but it’s not too late to follow the Lord. We’re not going to mess up his plan so that it can’t be done.
But in that, there’s a second challenge here, a second truth, which is, are we going to turn to our power to try to fix it or to his? Jeroboam didn’t completely abandon the Lord in every way. What he did is he said, well, I’ll encounter the Lord on my own terms. I’ll do it my way where I have control.
What happens? Well, he doesn’t experience the Lord’s blessing. He never chooses to follow the Lord. But the invitation here is that God’s promise is so sure and secure that when we feel like everything’s messed up and maybe we’re even the reason why it’s all messed up, that we can turn to him, that we can trust in him. And you know what, his promise is still sure. That in our imperfection, we can turn to him and his promise is sure.
Whatever sin we’ve done even today, that his promise is surer than that, that whatever messiness we’ve put into our lives, whatever wrong turns we’ve taken on the map, that we can’t dead-end his promises. So we can trust in him today. He’s faithful.
That lamp didn’t get extinguished, despite the best efforts of the humans involved. It didn’t get extinguished. It shines brighter now than ever as we look to that cross where the servant king came, took our sin, and saved us through it.
Our messiness didn’t mess it up back then, and it won’t mess it up now. We can still turn and trust in him today.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, we do pray that you would help us, but we would understand you do call us to faithfulness. You would call us to actually look to you and not to ourselves. And yet as we reflect on that, sometimes we become convinced that maybe, yes, we’re not powerful enough to make everything right for ourselves in the way we want, but then we start to think, well, maybe I’m powerful enough to mess up your plan.
In both of these, we find ourselves, Lord, in a sense of pride and some twisted sense that we think that we’re actually the ones in control and powerful, but Lord, we know that you are the one. And so we take the messiness in our hearts, the places where we have gone on those detours, help us to realize that you are the one who’s actually in control, and then to trust in you. That no matter if the parking lot seems flat or seems hilly, that we’d know that you are the one who provides security. It’s not our control. It’s not our seemingly having everything under control in some sense or another. It’s in having a God who is in control.
We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
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