Sermons tagged with Prayer

Good morning. My name's Doug Bergeson. I'm a partner here at Grace, and I'm going to start off this morning by giving you all a very, very special treat. I'm going to sing a song from my childhood that some of you will be familiar with. Although I can't remember what I did yesterday, for some reason, this song that I learned in Sunday school when I was only four or five years old remains etched in my memory crystal clear. So here goes. You might want to say a quick prayer for me, but here goes. Oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Sing along if you know this next chorus. Oh, the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Splat! Now, if you can overlook the singing, you might be thinking, aw, that's a cute little Sunday school ditty. But of course, it's much more than that, as its lyrics are lifted directly from Scripture. And even more than that, they come straight from the mouth of Jesus. It's a reading from Matthew chapter 7. The streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and theining the way you relate to God, and we're reading this book together, to answer that most central of questions. What does it mean to build one's house on the rock? And while the book doesn't use that exact language, that's precisely what the author in this sermon series are doing as we explore the many ways in which we relate to God. How we try to build our house, our lives, on the rock. If you've heard either of the last two weeks' sermons or are reading along in the book, you know that the author sets the table for where he's trying to take us as readers by describing the primary postures that many of us adopt in our relationship with God. The four postures are life under God, life over God, life from God, and life for God. In his introduction, the author Sky Jathani describes a scene at a 1,500-year-old Roman tomb in Italy where tourists are ushered in to the dark, unable to see the reason they came in the first place. A vaulted ceiling covered in an exquisite mosaic that depicts Jesus as the good shepherd, surrounded by sheep in a starry paradise. However, if one is patient, a light will eventually come on, illuminating the mosaic for just a few seconds before returning to darkness. Each time that light comes on, the visitors are given another glimpse of the world behind the shadows. And just like when the lights come on in the tomb, each of these four postures give us one perspective, one angle of what life with God is like, but it's not the full picture. Standing alone, each of these postures will give a distorted view. This matters a lot because the postures we adopt, that lens through which we view our relationship with God, is critical. And it is that view, that lens, which drives what we expect out of our relationship. And this is where the book is dead on. As what we expect has an enormous and defining impact on how each of us experiences life as a Christian. And it's especially tricky because not only do all four postures contain elements of truth, some more than others, but all four also find some basis and support in Scripture. So unless you don't mind being surprised, disappointed, and disillusioned with the Christian experience, we need to make sure that our expectations match up with what the full testimony of Scripture teaches us to expect, allowing it to properly inform, set boundaries and limits, and provide context for when each of these postures is appropriate in some measure and when they're not. When Jesus came to earth, his message was incredibly radical and countercultural, a message which challenged everyone and flipped the status quo completely on its head. But as the author of our book points out, in the ensuing 2,000 years, we've learned to cope with that message quite well by slowly but surely co-opting Jesus and his message, making him more like us, reflecting our priorities and desires, and less like him. I'm reminded of the chorus from the old Linkin Park song, Numb. All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you. That's not a very good impression of Linkin Park, but whatever. For many, it's morphed into a spiritual Rorschach test. In determining what our relationship with God should be like, we see whatever we want to see. And inevitably, we tend to assume that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives. And this assumption that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives is especially true of the third posture that we're looking at this morning, life from God. Now let me first say that for those of us who believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, life, of course, does come from God. But what does that mean exactly? Our author defines the essence of the life from God posture as a relationship in which we are more interested in what God can do for us and how he might bless us than we're interested in actually knowing him. A relationship whose primary value is to help us solve our problems and navigate through life's challenges to achieve what we want. This posture is most often and most easily criticized when it's taken to an extreme, commonly referred to as the health and wealth or prosperity gospel. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and early 70s, I would sometimes listen on Sunday night to Reverend Ike's radio broadcast. His unrelenting and super upbeat message was that God wanted to bless each and every one of us right now in this life. His sayings included, God doesn't want you to have your pie in the sky by and by when you die. He wants you to have it now with the cherry on top. Or, he added this, you don't have to wait for the pearly gate. Reverend Ike also claimed good health is my divine right. And I remember him saying that God wanted me to have a Cadillac and that he had nine or so, enthusiastically adding, my garages runneth over. Although easy to do, it's not my intent to mock and refute such extremes because I don't think most of us fall into that camp. Furthermore, my complaint with the life from God posture isn't that it's wrong to want God's blessings. It's not. The Bible constantly encourages us to desire God's blessings. Rather, this morning, I'm going to take a different tact than our author in critiquing this posture. As I stated earlier, life is from God, but that's often misunderstood in the life from God posture in two primary ways. The first thing to realize is that God has already blessed us. An implicit premise of the life from God posture is that we have to do certain things and behave certain ways to somehow curry God's favor and procure his blessings in our lives. Whereas in fact, the Bible is abundantly clear that God's plan was to always bless us. Before the foundation of the universe was laid, God's intent was to bless us through his son, Jesus Christ. Before any of us lifted a finger or did anything good or bad, God was blessing us. As the Apostle Paul stated in Romans, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It's like a gift from Amazon that's already been delivered. We don't have to convince someone to send it. We don't have to help order it. The gift has already been given. It's already been sent. It's already been delivered. In fact, it's already sitting on our front porch. All we have to do is open our front door and bring it inside. The life from God posture assumes blessing is transactional. But it was all God. No transaction. As the disciple John wrote, we love him because he first loved us. So the first major misunderstanding of the life from God posture is the notion that we need to get God on our side, working on our behalf. Truth is, he's always been on our side. Before time began, he was on our side. Our job isn't to get God to bless us, but to trust that he already has and will continue to do so. The second big misunderstanding of the life from God posture and what I'll spend the remainder of our time on this morning is the very concept of what constitutes a blessing from God. What does being blessed by God actually look like in our lives? And it's here that the life from God posture in a community of faith like ours operates much more subtly than extremes like Reverend Ike. Yet, it can still wreak havoc by creating expectations which aren't validated in Scripture. Life from God is seductive and appealing because it posits that Christianity is worthwhile because of the way it blesses me. Life just goes better as a believer. But again, what does that even mean? That's the $64,000 question. What does being blessed by God look like in the here and now? Particularly in more affluent societies, the tendency is to think that God wants the exact same things for us that we want for us. And my guess is that's how life from God posture subtly impacts us here at Grace. Although I doubt many of us genuinely believe that being blessed by God involves a bunch of Cadillacs or perfect health or a problem-free life, I would bet that for many of us, God's help and blessing correspond pretty closely to what we think is important. A good family, good health, happiness, comfort, professional success. I could go on and on. So in the next few minutes, I'm going to challenge our conventional understanding of blessing. And if what I have to say rubs you the wrong way, then I'm probably on to something. Although we can learn about God by observing the world he created, God's most intentional and fullest revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ. Jesus was God's best self-revelation, representing in his person and ministry the true nature of God. And as the original book about Jesus Christ, the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments together, is referred to as God's special revelation. So God chose to reveal himself through the written word. And more specifically than that, he chose to do it through a story. A great, sweeping, complex, long, and remarkable story unfolding down through the ages. And as a story, the Bible is really the opposite of a textbook or a theological dictionary. You can't go to chapter 7 and read all that is said about faith. There is no concise, complete treatment of all that is meant by salvation. We might prefer Wikipedia, where we can learn all we need to know in a few short paragraphs, and that can be helpful at times, but that's not the Bible. A story has plot and characters and a variety of storylines that emerge and develop over time. A story can capture the full range of the human experience, providing a richness and depth that simply can't be matched by a more systematic description of principles and concepts. Nuance, mystery, contradiction, paradox, tension, all are part of great storytelling and all are indelible elements of real life. Although I'd been a Christian most of my life, it was only about 20 years ago that I began viewing the Bible first and foremost as one magnificent and seamless story of God and his love for his creation. And I haven't looked back. I'd go even further and say that I believe it is imperative for all of us to approach and understand the Bible in this light. But not because that's my preference or because I say so, but because that's how God chose to do it. And in the Bible, God reveals his purposes and plans slowly and deliberately over time. A progression takes place. Concepts are first introduced in ways that the original audiences and later day readers, such as ourselves, might be better able to get their arms around and understand. But over the course of the story, a certain development, an expansion of the concept takes place until it reaches its fulfillment and climax in the New Testament. As an example, I've often thought that if you were new to Christianity and were just airdropped in on a Sunday morning and heard the story of Jesus in isolation, how weird and bizarre must it seem that Jesus had to die for us. But as you start reading at the beginning in Genesis, one is introduced early on to the idea that God saves by substitution. Something else dies for us instead of us on our behalf. It begins modestly with the story of Abraham and Isaac and is developed and expanded further in God's dealings with his chosen people, the Israelites. But it reaches its fulfillment and stunning climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. Vaughn Roberts, in his book, God's Big Picture, illustrates the value of progressive revelation in this way. A century ago, a father promises his son that he will give him a horse on his 21st birthday. Cars are subsequently invented, and so when the birthday finally comes, the boy is given a car instead of a horse. The promise has still been fulfilled, but not literally. The father could not have promised his son a car because neither could have understood the concept. In a similar way, God made his promises to Israel in ways they could understand. He used categories they were familiar with, such as the nation, the temple, and material prosperity in the land. But the fulfillment breaks the boundaries of those categories. To expect a literal fulfillment is to miss the point. Here are just three quick examples. God uses evil for good, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat to ultimately accomplish his purposes. In Genesis, Joseph's brothers can't stand him and sell him into slavery. But years later, Joseph has risen to a position of such power in Egypt that he is able to save his entire family from famine and keep alive the promises God had made to his ancestors. A fortuitous turn of events to be sure, but that's just a horse. When God's only son, Jesus, comes to earth in human form and is crucified by evil men, but through his unjust and wrongful death redeems the world for all eternity, that's an automobile. God's people wanted a king, and God gave them kings. But even the best, like David, failed and disappointed. That's a horse. But a king who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, and who will reign with perfect justice and righteousness forever and ever, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now that's an automobile. When God redeems his people out of slavery in Egypt and then promises to dwell with them, first in the tabernacle in the desert and then behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem. That's something spectacular, but it's still just a horse. But when God redeems us from slavery to sin and death, offering us life through his son Jesus Christ, and God's Holy Spirit takes up residence in the individual human heart, and we, like living stones, are built into a spiritual house where God now dwells, that's an automobile. I explain all this because it's so relevant for our purpose this morning in looking at the life from God posture. For another big concept that undergoes radical development and evolution over the course of the Bible is the idea of how God blesses us. In fact, it evolves so much that by the time Jesus comes and the fullness of God and his redemptive plan is revealed, it's hard to even recognize what God now considers to be a blessing as it's been turned completely upside down. No longer is blessing what might make us happy or healthy or comfortable or successful or respected or understood or liked or safe. Rather, a blessing is anything that moves our hearts and minds to a place more receptive to God's grace. Anything can be a blessing if it helps to convince us of our desperate need for a Savior. Virtually anything can be a blessing if it helps better prepare and position us for eternity. Now, there is no verse that explicitly says that in so many words. But as you move along the biblical narrative, as God's magnificent story of love and redemption continues to unfold, it becomes abundantly clear that this is the case. Certainly, there were times earlier in the story when God did bless his people and reward their obedience and trust in ways that they and we would clearly understand and to which we can all relate. The Israelite sandals didn't wear out in the desert. God gave them food and clothing and so many descendants that they would rival the stars in the sky. A promised land flowing with milk and honey. Military victory, prosperity, long life, and peace. And this makes perfect sense, as God had to convince a primitive people some 3,500 years ago, who had little else to go on, that this particular God was the one you wanted to hitch your wagon to. Blessing them in immediate, temporal, and tangible ways was essential in order to build trust. But as the story goes on, and as God always knew, the power of sin would prove to be too strong. God's material blessings did not draw Israel closer to him, did not make them more inclined to trust, and in fact often had the opposite effect. More needed to be done. And before too long, the entire biblical narrative starts changing from a temporal vantage point, if I obey and if I trust, I will enjoy peace and prosperity, victory and long life, to an eternal perspective and a future hope. As you read on, it's as if your eyes are forced to look up into the distance, start to realize that what happens in this life is not the goal. It's not the be all and end all. What happens is as important, but only as it impacts eternity. God's endgame lies in the future. Children, land, prosperity, and peace in the present, that's a horse. Eternity with God, that's a big old fancy automobile. And by the time we get to the New Testament, the entire tone and tenor of Scripture is remarkably unimpressed with the kind of things we typically consider blessings and focuses entirely on how this life is getting us ready and how we might help others get ready for eternity. Although we should be thankful for great relationships, loving family, friends, health, material comfort, peace and safety, it's in the absence of one or more of these things that we are most acutely aware of our brokenness, of our lack of control, of our need to build our house on the firm foundation of the one and only one who actually is in control. And because of that, God simply is far less concerned about our momentary comfort, happiness, and success than are we. We do our faith no favors when we think of blessing predominantly in terms of what our culture and our world say it is. If you think this is how God blesses you, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Yes, we should be pleased and thankful to God when things go well. But to be honest, good things seem to happen as much to people who don't follow Christ as those who do. Success, comfort, wealth, health, happy marriages, well-adjusted kids, best as I can tell, don't fall disproportionately on believers. Anything that helps prepare us for eternity, anything that helps us move to a posture receptive to God's love and grace, any circumstance that conveys to us our desperate need for a Savior, in God's eyes, can serve as a blessing. On the flip side, anything we normally would consider a blessing turns out not really to be a blessing, not if it works against God's purposes. And of course, the rub is that a great many of the things we associate with being blessed do not prepare our hearts and minds for eternity. Even such universally desirable things as good health, a good job, a good marriage, a good family cease to be blessings if they undermine our sense of need for God, if they lead to arrogance and pride, to a sense of independence and self-sufficiency. If our success and good fortune draw us away from God and not towards Him, then these otherwise good things have become, to use a good Old Testament word, snares. I'm going to read just a few verses from Deuteronomy 8. these decrees that I'm giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. And that's exactly what did happen. Sound familiar? It does to me. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul conveyed the same message, reading from 1 Corinthians 4. that we feel a greater sense of our need for God when things are difficult than when they're easy. Struggles and sorrow, tragedy and injustice are uniquely effective at disabusing us of any thought that we are in control, uniquely effective at reminding us of our insufficiency, brokenness, and desperate need. Yet so many times we question and agonize and wring our hands as to why a so-called loving God would allow a fallen world with so much sadness and evil injustice and injustice. Is it any wonder? Is it really that big of a mystery? Why are we surprised? It's my conviction that a fallen world was always part of God's plan, in part, precisely so that we would struggle. Again, it's that pattern of God using evil for good, how he uses our fallen world to accomplish his purposes, drawing a lost humanity back to himself. The pivotal question for each of us this morning is, when crummy things happen in our lives that do not look or feel anything like blessings, how do we respond? Do they move us to a place of trust or a place of despair? We have a decisive role to play if there's to be any redemptive value in our crummy circumstances. If we do not take advantage of them as opportunities to trust, we run the risk of rendering them meaningless, leaving them just crummy. So when we talk about the posture, life from God, and when we expect to enjoy God's promised blessings, we better understand in what form these blessings might come and over what time horizon they might pay dividends and how best we might respond in faith and trust so that God can actually use those things for good in our lives and the lives of others. I'm going to close this morning with the tiny book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament. Just for curiosity's sake, during these last six months of the pandemic, how many of you have read the book? Let me see a show of hands. I'm just kidding. I already know the answer. Zero. Approximately zero of you have read Habakkuk. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect example. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't been asked to preach, so I'm not casting any dispersions. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect exclamation point for my message this morning of how God blesses and how he operates and what building one's house on the rock really looks like. It's a far cry from the life from God posture as commonly understood by most of us. The book of Habakkuk consists entirely of a short dialogue between Habakkuk the prophet and God. It begins with the prophet complaining to God of how it seems that all the violence and justice and strife that's running rampant in his country of Judah goes unpunished. Why is God tolerating it? God responds by saying, No worries, Habakkuk. I'm raising up the Babylonians, those fiercest and most dreaded of peoples, guilty men whose strength is their own God to swoop in and devour Judah. Upon hearing that, the prophet is flabbergasted and even more of a tizzy, complaining even further to God. What? You've got to be kidding me. How can you allow such a wicked and godless nation to swallow up those more righteous than themselves? You're blowing my mind. Then the Lord answered the prophet a second time. Let me worry about the Babylonians. They will get theirs in due time. However, you, Habakkuk, need to be patient and wait for my appointed time. Though it may linger, it will certainly come. But as for you right now, the righteous will live by faith. It made no sense to him. Nothing he heard was assuring. Nothing seemed fair. But in that moment, Habakkuk leaned in and chose to trust. Listen to his closing words. I heard and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud, Verse 1. and no cattle in the stalls. Yet I rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights. Although he was not happy with what he had heard and thought it violent, unjust, and unloving, Habakkuk moved towards God rather than away, convinced that his God was both able and willing to do the right thing regardless of whether he himself could understand, an abiding trust that God was not only in control, but was also the ultimate victor. And in that moment, Habakkuk was being blessed, all circumstances to the contrary, prepared for an eternity with the God who loves him. That is where the rubber truly meets the road. Even when you can't necessarily see God's goodness or understand his purposes in the middle of the mess, when everything is shrouded in mystery and confusion, do you choose to trust? Do you believe that no matter what seems to be happening at any given moment in this life, that God has already won the victory and always has our best interests at heart? Building one's house on the rock is resting in that knowledge. I began this morning by singing a song about the wise man who built his house upon the rock. It's important to note that it doesn't go, oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And before I pray, I'd like to invite Steve and Lisa back up here as we continue to worship. But please bow your heads. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. I pray that you'll convict each one of us and help each one of us understand just how desperately you love us and the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours. Help us to know that despite the fact that we live in a world where sorrow and unhappiness and disappointment are part and parcel to our daily experience. I pray that we'll be grounded in the fact that you love us and always have our best interest at heart. And we thank you for making it possible for us to have an eternity with you. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

This is good. I've been preaching to Steve for 22 weeks on Thursday mornings. This is great. This is the first morning. Jen and I moved into a new house in April, beginning of April. This is the first morning I've woken up in my new house Sunday morning and driven to church and now preach. So this is really, really great. So good morning to you, Grace. Good morning to you online. I wanted to say to those of you who are watching from home and just reiterate, you are every bit as much a participant in what's happening this morning and in this church as anybody who comes in person. And we are now in this new season of life as a church. This is the new season of grace. We are one church that meets in a bunch of different locations, both here and now, like Kyle said, all over the world online now. And this is what church is going to be for the foreseeable future. We're going to be like this for a long time. I don't know if you guys have thought that through, but this is a new season in the life of Grace as a church because we have to be one church in multiple locations. It's going to be a while before everybody feels all the way comfortable coming back. We're going to grow back into a need for children's ministry as that starts back up. And so this is the new season for Grace, which is kind of crazy to say, because I don't know if you know this, the last time we met in person, I was announcing to you the pledge total of our campaign. That's a thing that happened. And then COVID started, and here we are. So even though this plan, the way that 2020 has played out, and this new season of grace that we're facing is not our plan. God knew what was going to happen. His hand has been on us this entire time, and it will continue to be on us. He will continue to be with us. We have always said that God's hand is on grace. He's made it evident that he loves grace, and we are every bit as confident now that his hand remains on grace. And I need nothing more than this. I was talking with Joe as worship started this morning. Joe's the moderator of our board, and I went, this is great. I didn't expect this. All you brave souls to be here, this is wonderful to get to see everybody. So we are excited. And as we move into this new season in the life of grace, I did want to say just thank you a ton. There have been some people working behind the scenes, and whenever you want to call out any one individual person, it gets a little murky because so many people have been doing so very much. We've had people watching our practice online streams and giving feedback. We've had people showing up to work in the booth and help out behind the scenes. We've had Erin, her whole ministry, our children's pastor, has changed and she's just been killing it online. Kyle's switched everything to online. Everybody just up and changed their job in this quarantine and have done so much to push the church forward. But as we started this new season of grace, I would be remiss if I didn't point out to you the hard work of Steve Goldberg, our worship pastor. When we went in March, when we realized, hey, we have to go totally online. We have to find a way to record a sermon, release it online, and be totally online. And we'd like to have a virtual lobby where people can still talk to each other. And also, we need a new webpage. And we need somebody to record the sermon and edit it and upload it and be ready to go. Steve? And then when the elders, when we realized as elders that in June, we're going to have to go live. We're going to have to do a live stream. We really don't have a choice. We're going to have to be able to do this when we come back because when we begin to resume in-person gatherings, because not everyone's going to feel comfortable doing that. There's costs involved. There's technical attitudes involved. There's different things that you have to do. It's a big, huge stressor. And once again, as a church, we went, Steve? And he knocked it out of the park. So his job fundamentally changed in COVID. He has been a huge servant to the church and is the reason, the biggest human reason that we exist as a body right now because of the work that he's done behind the scenes. So we are grateful to Steve. Thank you, Steve, for that. As we jump back into the series, we are in the series called A Time of Kings. We're walking through the Book of Kings. We know it to be the Book of Kings. Our Bible divides it into two, 1 and 2 Kings, but it was originally all one big scroll that got divided in half because it was just too long of a scroll to carry around. This morning, we are in 2 Kings chapter 10. So if you have a Bible there at home, go ahead and turn there. If you have one here in the service, turn to the Bible. The Bible in front of you, in the seat back in front of you, has not been touched for over like six months. So it's good. It's clean. You can touch it. But we're going to be in 2 Kings chapter 10. In this chapter, there's a principle pointed out that reminded me of a book that was written back in 2001. It's almost 20 years old. If you're a business leader, if you're in the corporate world at all, you have probably gone through this book, Good to Great by Jim Collins. It's a great perennial book. It's one of these wonderful leadership books. Incidentally, in these leadership books, whenever you read these leadership books, how to be an effective leader, how to grow an effective company, whatever it is, the result of it is the author will always land on, after different studies by like Duke and Stanford and Yale and whatever else, that to be an effective leader, you need to be humble and lead without an ego. You need to be a servant leader and put others first. These are the most effective leaders we see in the world. And as a believer, you just kind of go like, oh, you mean to lead like Jesus? That's what your research tells you? That's just an aside. But in this book, Good to Great, he looks at companies and he's asking the question, how do companies go from good, effective companies to really great, knocking it out of the park companies? What's the difference between something that's good and then taking it to the next level and making it great? He's got a lot of good ideas in there that stand the test of time. But the one that he leads the book with that I think is incredibly effective is this statement that I was reminded of as I looked at the story of Jehu this week. It's a statement it's in chapter one of the book. Good is the enemy of great. Good is the enemy of great. And what he means is that when we settle for good enough, that's the enemy of actually pursuing greatness. That so many people, so many corporations don't reach greatness because they settle for good enough. They get to good enough and then they go, great, that's perfect. And they don't actually get to be great. So its premise is that good is the enemy of great. And this is true in the professional world. It absolutely is. You know this to be true in your own lives. It's also true in marriage. It's true in how we parent our kids. It's true in our physical health. Settling for good enough is always the enemy of great. And the story this week points out to us that not only is that true in the professional world, but it's true in the spiritual world as well. I think when we look at the story of Jehu, what we see is that spiritually, good is the enemy of great. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn, like I said, to 2 Kings 10. I'm going to give you a little bit of the background of what's going on here with this story of Jehu. By the way, I don't think there's ever been a more redneck pronunciation of this particular king's name, J-E-H-U, Jehu, right guys? But as I looked at him this week, it became apparent to me that this is one of the more tragic figures in the book of Kings. And I would have thought that two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, if you asked me, who are the characters in this book that make you sad? I wouldn't have named Jehu. But the more I dove into his story, the more my heart broke for him and the potential that he had that he messed up. If you've been following along, you'll remember that two weeks ago, we looked at the showdown of Elijah against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. And you might remember that the king at the time was a guy named King Ahab, married to a woman named Jezebel. And Ahab, when he took over as king, for whatever reason over Israel, he installed Baal as the God. This is the God that we're going to worship. So he had 450 prophets of Baal. He had temples erected to Baal all over the country. And that was the predominant religion in Israel, which broke the heart of God because these are his people. These are his children, the descendants of Abrahamal on Mount Carmel. If you haven't seen that sermon, there's a spoiler alert. Elijah wins. God wins. And he kills the 450 prophets of Baal. He turns the hearts of the people towards the Lord, but apparently not all the way. Because when Ahab dies, Jehu is his successor. Jehu takes over as king. And he immediately, you'll see in the preceding chapters, stamps out the lines of Ahab and Jezebel, which is an uncomfortable truth, but that's just what they did in the time of kings. That was part of the deal. And the very next step he takes after making sure that Ahab and Jezebel are no longer a threat is he puts to death all the prophets of Baal and he burns down the temples of Baal. He says, no more with this religion, not in my reign, it's done. And it's because Jehu had a heart for the Lord. He said, this is wrong. We're not going to do this in the Israel that I run. He burned them all down. He ran out the prophets. He killed the ones that remained. And he said, in this country, we honor God. This is what we do. And it's a great thing. This is why I think Jehu is a tragic figure, because if you've been paying attention, you know that after Solomon, David and Solomon ruled over Israel, all of Israel. But after Solomon, his son Rehoboam was a dummy and he was so prideful that he split the nation. Now there's the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah. After the Civil War, there is a split. As you follow the history of Judah through the book of Kings, they have, depending on who you ask, either three or seven good kings. Israel had no good kings, not a single good king as it existed as a sovereign nation, if you understand good to be a king who turned the hearts of the people back to the Lord, a king that was faithful to God. Israel didn't have a single good king. And here Jehu is, at the beginning of his reign, taking this huge step, doing this really great thing, this thing that was very bold, this thing that probably would have upset a good portion of the people who followed Baal, this thing that was loud and prominent and good. And he wiped away the prophets of Baal and he wiped away the temples of Baal. And he could have been a good king that changed the course of the nation of Israel, that changed the course of history for Israel for all of eternity. But he didn't do this one thing. And that's where we pick up the story in verse 28. Chapter 10,'s good. God says you've done a good thing. You came in and with faith, because you love me, you got rid of the prophets of Baal, you got rid of the idols of Baal, you got rid of the temples of Baal, and you have followed me. And because of that, this throne is going to be in your family for four generations. This is a good thing. He is on the precipice of potential now, Jehu is, the precipice of greatness. All he has to do is finish the drill. All he has to do is take the next step. He's done the hard thing. And God says, good, I'm going to honor this. But God's not done talking to Jehu. We pick it back up in verse 31. But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God nation split, everybody was still practicing Jews. And for every festival and holiday, they had to go to Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, they would pay the temple tax. They would pay for their sacrifices. They would pay for a hotel stay. They'd go to the restaurants. They'd do the whole deal. It was a trip. It was a pilgrimage. And Jerusalem was getting all the tourist dollars. And Jeroboam went, this stinks because Jerusalem is in Judah. So he made up his own religion with golden calves and he put them in Bethel and in Dan and he told the Israelites, hey, good job. You don't have to go to Jerusalem anymore. You can stay right here and leave your tax and tourism dollars to the nation of Israel. It was an economic choice. And in doing so, he sinned against the Lord. And those golden calves stayed there through many kings, virtually ignored. But to the heart of God, they were offensive. And when Jeroboam took the great step of getting rid of all of the idols in Israel, he didn't get rid of these two idols, the original ones, the ones that were there from the beginning. And I don't know why he didn't do that. I don't know why. Your guess is as good as mine. He could have thought these are part of the heritage of the country. I don't want to mess with this. I don't want to offend people. People go there. They're tourist attractions now. I don't want to fool with it. I've ruffled enough feathers with the bail thing. I don't want to do this thing. He could have thought that. He could have just thought, they don't matter. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to worship these golden calves. Nobody does that anymore. It's an antiquated religion. It's part of our history. It doesn't matter now. They're no threat to God, so whatever. But for whatever reason, he left them behind. And because he left them behind, he didn't turn his heart completely to God. Because he left them behind, he didn't do his part in turning the hearts of the people completely to God. And over time, the worship of those golden calves began to creep back into the culture. And over time, the hearts of God's people were turned away from him again. And over time, it says at the end of this that God began, in verse 32, that the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel. Bit by bit, portions of the kingdom were taken away from Jehu and his descendants until in four generations they were carried away as slaves because of this fundamental mistake that he made. And to me, the lesson from Jehu and his reign that echoes down through the centuries is that partial obedience leads to total failure. Partial obedience, a half measure, not quite full measure, leads to total failure. Partial obedience under Jehu led to total failure. The steps he took with Baal were big, and they were bold, and they were brave, and they were courageous. And he gets credit for that obedience. But because he didn't take the full step, because he didn't go the whole way and take the full measure, eventually it led to his total failure. And you know, the Bible is replete with these examples where half measures don't get the job done, half measures lead to total failure. The most prominent example to me is the transition between the book of Joshua and the book of Judges. The book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Bible that tells the story of the conquest of the land of Canaan. God brings his people, led by Joshua the general, into the promised land that's now occupied by other tribes and nations and city-states. And the whole book of Joshua is a book of conquest sweeping through the nation, and God has given them the divine instruction to get rid of everybody who's not one of my children. This is your land. It's nobody else's. I don't want them here. They're going to contaminate the holiness of my people. Get rid of them. And the whole book is about how God goes before Joshua and his armies and makes that possible. But then the next book, the book of Judges starts. And the book of Judges starts off by telling us, Joshua did right and swept through the land and cleared it out. But he left a couple of pockets of some tribes and some villages that he must have thought were inconsequential. I don't know if he was battle weary and just didn't feel like it. I don't know if he didn't see them as a threat. And so he left them. They could never oppose anything to Israel that would be bad for us. They could never hurt us, but he left them behind. He offered partial obedience. And because it was partial and not full, the author of the book of Judges tells us that because Joshua left them behind, that they were a thorn in the side of the nation of Israel. And in the book of Judges, we see those little inconsequential people groups rise up and oppress God's people in Judges. And they stay there and they remain so much so that generations later when David is in the valley fighting Goliath, he is fighting a giant that is a descendant of the tribes that Joshua left behind because he wouldn't be completely obedient. We see over and over again in Scripture that partial obedience leads to total failure. And what I want us to see this morning is that these stories, the story of Jehu and overthrowing Baal but not the golden calves, the story of Joshua not cleansing the nation like he should have. These stories are not stories about cleansing a nation. They're not stories about getting rid of idols. That's not really what they're about. These stories are about our ongoing battle with sin. They're about our ongoing pursuit of holiness. These stories matter to us deeply because what we should learn from this story of Jehu and his partial obedience is that partial obedience leads to total failure in sin and sin, in lowercase sin and in uppercase sin. For us, here's what I mean. I think the easiest application of this lesson is for us to think about that one sin in our life that just eats our lunch. That one sin in our life that over the years, decades maybe, we just have to battle with over and over again and we experience different seasons of victory and different seasons of struggle with this sin, this one big sin. Many of you, when I said sin, this one big sin, half the room and half of you guys there at home went, yeah, I know what that is for me. You don't have to do a lot of soul searching. You, in fact, think I'm preaching right to you right now that the Holy Spirit gave me a special message, and I know what your sin is. Let me tell you something, I don't. I'm so glad we're not Catholic, and you don't have to confess to me because I don't want to know. But we have those. These big sins that we struggle with over and over and over again. And if you have one of those, come on. You know what that struggle is. You've taken the big measures, haven't you? You've knocked down all the prophets of Baal. You've burned down all the temples for this sin. But you left behind some golden calves because you didn't want to admit that was tempting too. Because maybe you were a little battle weary. You were tired of fighting that when you thought, those can't possibly trouble me. And you left a little remnant. You left a little thing. You left a little window. You left a little foothold behind. And over the years, that sin evolved back into something that was more debilitating than before. You been through that cycle? Yeah, I have too. This story from Jehu is a reminder that partial obedience leads to total failure. The easiest example of this sin, I'm sorry guys, I don't mean to make us, hey, welcome back. Let me make you super uncomfortable for a minute. The easiest example of this is lust, right? It's a sneaky, pernicious sin, man. You can sneak in anywhere. Now, if that's something we struggle with, we can give in to that struggle any time there's cell phone service. And we've taken the steps and we've done the things and we've tried to move past it and we've confessed and we've done the hard stuff and we've sat there in shame and we've been met with grace and we've said, I'm not going to mess it up again. But we leave these pockets, don't we? We leave these little golden idols where we say, certainly that couldn't be what does it. And over time, it builds and becomes just as debilitating as it ever was. And it's not just true of that sin. It's true of pride, or greed,, gluttony, or sloth. So let me just encourage you. If this is you, if you've got one of those sins in your life that's just kicking your tail, that as soon as I started talking about this, you knew what yours was. If that's you, can today be the day that you draw the line in the sand and you go, God, just show me everything I've got in my life that needs to come down so that I can move past this. Show me what full obedience looks like. I'm tired of partially obeying you and then totally failing. So show me what full obedience looks like in this sin. Can today be the day you do that? If you have one of those sins, and you would honestly, in your heart, listen, you don't have to lie to me. I have no idea what you're thinking. The people around you have no idea what you're thinking. If you have that in your life right now, and you think to yourself, you know what? I know that my life shouldn't have this sin in it, but I really like it. And honestly, I don't want it to go away. I'm happier when it's a part of my life. Can you just be brave enough to pray today that God would change your heart? Can you just admit that to the Father? Say, God, I have this sin in my life. I know it doesn't belong there, but I like it there. Will you please change my heart so that I'm not happy with this being a part of my life anymore? Will you just pray that and let the Lord work through that prayer? But this lesson, partial obedience leads to total failure, isn't just true of an individual, lowercase sin, but of all sin, of the sin nature that lives inside of us, of the sin nature that Jesus died so that we might be able to put to death. We can only battle that sin nature with Christ. We can only battle that sin nature with the Spirit. So even as we talk about battling all the sin that is in our hearts, we have to first acknowledge that Jesus expunged that from our hearts and we wander back into it because we're broken creatures. But I think in a church full of Christians, this is probably the more applicable way to look at this story. For many of us here in this room and at home, wherever you are, we don't have that one big sin. Sure, we sin. Nobody's perfect. But we don't have the one thing that if people found out about it, it would just tear us down. We don't have that, but we have sin. And I think for many of us, especially church people, this is where good is the enemy of great really comes into play. Because we feel like we're good enough, right? Maybe you got saved as an adult. Maybe you came to know Jesus as an adult and you look at your life now and you compare it to your life then and you think like, man, I'm totally different. Like I cuss way less, which in Christian circles has to mean you're godly. I cuss way less, right? I don't do the things I used to do. I used to drink this much, now I drink this much. I used to party with these people, now I don't do that. I used to have those friends, now I have these friends. I go to small group, I do all the things. I'm pretty good. So you compare yourself to who you used to be, you feel pretty good about life. Or maybe you've been in church for forever. Maybe you're like me, and as far back as your memory works, church and faith were a part of it. And so you think you're pretty good. You're pretty squared away. And yeah, sure, I mean, I could read my Bible more, but come on, just pastors read their Bible every day, right? Maybe most of the elders. People don't really do that. You know that you could pray more, but you're like, I mean, come on, who has time to pray like 30 minutes a day? Isn't that for little old ladies? Like, I got things to do. And we're pretty good. We look pretty okay. We compare ourselves to the right people. We're pretty spiritually healthy. But that partial obedience, those partial measures, allowing God to change portions of your heart, and then when he shows you this part of your heart, you go, God, I feel pretty good right now. Maybe you don't say that. Maybe you'd never have the audacity to say that to God in prayer, but we say it every day with the way that we act, right? Those partial measures, they lead to total failure just as much as anything else does. And when I say they lead to total failure, what I mean is if we're just cruising along, settling for good enough, not pursuing the Father, not engaging in a relationship with the Father, not daily pursuing Him through prayer and through reading His Word, and then something happens and our life gets shaken to its core and we need our God. We have not been investing in this relationship with Him and we don't have anywhere to go or to grasp and He feels so distant when we need Him so close. Or we're called to ministry or our kids have a question or we need to pour out and we realize that we're pouring from an empty vessel because we haven't been filling ourselves up because we've been settling for good enough. We've been settling for partial measures. It can lead to total failure. But you know, you know what scares me more than that total failure? You know what scares me more for myself and more for you in settling for good enough? It's the thought of what we're missing out on if we would pursue greatness. Think about Jehu. All Jehu had to do is take the next step and get rid of two cows, man. Get rid of those two golden calves, take the next step, take the full measure, and he would have been the lone good king in the nation of Israel. He would have forever changed the course of that nation. He would have been held up as a spiritual hero, and now he's lost history. Many of you never even heard of him before you walked in or before you tuned in this morning. He could have had such a better legacy. What richness and blessings of God did Jehu miss out on because he was partially obedient and he settled for good enough? And for you, what blessings of God are you foregoing by settling for good enough in your life? How much better of a spouse could your spouse have if you would refuse to settle for good enough in your life and you pursued holiness as God instructed you to pursue it. How much, think of your kids. How much better can we disciple our children if we would, as parents, refuse to settle for good enough and pursue greatness and pursue holiness and always go the full measure in our lives and in our hearts and always be willing to tear down the next thing that God shows us. What richness and blessing waits for us on the other side of complete surrender and obedience? We're told that at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence there are fullness of joy, that Jesus himself came that we might have life and have it to the full. And I am convinced that the only thing that is keeping us from not experiencing those pleasures and experiencing those joys and experiencing the full life that God has for us is our offerings of partial obedience rather than complete surrender. So look at the story of Jehu. Don't be scared of the consequences. Be aware of what he missed out on. And let's be people who determine, God, I don't want to miss those blessings that you have for me. I don't want to miss that richness that you have for me. I don't want to miss the relationship that you have waiting for me. I don't want my marriage to miss out on that. I don't want my kids to miss out on that. I don't want my next decades to miss out on that. And let's be people who learn from Jehu and apply it to sin and sin. And let today be the day that we say, I'm tearing down all the idols and getting rid of that big sin. And let today be the day that we say, I am going to stop offering partial obedience and start being willing to tear down everything that God shows me in my life so that I can experience all the blessing and all the joy and all the peace that he has for me. Let's do that together as a church. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. God, I think about maybe some of the things that I've missed, some of the experiences that I haven't had or some of the joys that I would have loved that my half-hearted devotion to you has cost me. Father, may we not be a people of regret. May we not be a people of fear, but may we be a people with an anticipatory joy of what is waiting for us when we will simply surrender ourselves to you. And whatever situations we find ourselves in, whether it's facing a big sin that we're just so scared of, that's just so pernicious, or whether it's facing that sin monster in our life and the temptation to settle for good enough and not tear down the next thing. Wherever we are, God, would you give us the faith and the courage and the desire to take that next step? For those of us who are entrenched, admired in sin, would you simply change our hearts to not be happy with that anymore? Would you help us as a church walk in a pursuit of holiness towards you? Thank you for this morning, for this new phase of grace. We pray that your hand would continue to be on us as it has been in spite everything around us and sometimes in spite of us. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's good to be here again with you in this way. We are in now the middle of a series called The Time of Kings. We're going through the books of 1 and 2 Kings, which is probably worth saying. I don't think I've mentioned this yet. When the book was written, when the books of 1 and 2 Kings were written, they were one big long book. But for the sake of the length of scrolls back in the day, they just cut it in half and call it 1 and 2 Kings. But more accurately, we are together as a church going through some of the stories in the book of Kings. This week, we arrive at what is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I would argue this is one of the greatest stories in the Old Testament. This story has everything. I love it so much. This is the story this week of Elijah and his showdown with the 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. We see this story in 1 Kings chapter 18. So if you have a Bible there at home with you, please go ahead and open that up. I try to encourage you every week, open up your Bible, go through the story with me, interact with the text with me, look at the parts that I'm not able to cover or that I don't bring up, and get a more holistic view of the story than just the perspective that I'm giving you. In this story, we see, I think, one of the greatest figures in Scripture, the prophet Elijah. Elijah and Elisha are these tremendous prophets that we see in the book of Kings. They don't get their own book later in the Old Testament, so we don't often pay them as much attention, but they were remarkable figures. Elijah was so righteous that God didn't even want him to experience death. He sent down a chariot to pick him up and carry him to heaven before he could even die. Elijah is a remarkable figure, and this is kind of his big moment. In this moment, he's going to interact with a king named Ahab, and we need to understand who Ahab was and the background that they have at this showdown. So I hope that if you've never heard this story before, that you are delighted, that you love it, that it flings you further into Scripture and brings it to life for you. If you do know this story, I hope maybe today we'll see it in a different light than perhaps what we've looked at it in in the past. So Elijah comes on the scene in 1 Kings chapter 17. That's when we see him. He's interacting with a king named Ahab. Ahab shows up in Kings 16. And when Ahab shows up, the writer of Kings, the author of Kings, tells us a couple things about Ahab was more evil than all the kings that came before him. And that he, more than any other king, because of his faithlessness, provoked the Lord to anger. Ahab was the king of Israel, the northern tribes. We learned last week that Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, had so much pride that he refused to listen to wisdom. And because of this, the kingdom descended into civil war. And for the rest of the Old Testament, continues on that path with the northern kingdoms of Israel being led by one king and the southern kingdom of Judah being led by another. Ahab is a king of Israel, the northern kingdoms. Jeroboam, the guy that went to war with Rehoboam, built some temples to some false gods and made up his own religion for tax revenue, really, if you look at it, in the northern kingdom. And so Ahab is one of these kings in the northern kingdom. The southern kingdoms had a handful of good kings who obeyed God. We're going to learn about some of those in this series to come. The northern kingdom had no good kings. Every king was evil. Every king was apostate. They were all bad. Ahab was the worst. He provoked God to anger more than any other king because of his deeds. He married a lady named Jezebel who had her own religion of Asherah that she followed, and she had 400 prophets that she kept at her table. Ahab had 450 prophets of Baal that he kept at his table. So they are funding 850 prophets for these counterfeit religions. Because they're doing this, God speaks to his prophet Elijah, who goes to Ahab, and he tells Ahab, because of your sin, because of who you are, I'm going to bring a drought on this land, and it will not rain again until I give the word, Elijah says. Ahab, of course, is incensed. He's furious. He tries to kill Elijah. Elijah gets away, and he flees, and he wanders around in the wilderness for three years. From there, God says, Elijah, I want you to go to this place where there's a brook. So Elijah goes, and he drinks from the brook, and every day God sends ravens with bread and with meat to feed Elijah in the morning and in the evening. I think this is the first recorded place in history that we see Uber eats. So they bring him bread and meat every day, and then eventually the brook runs dry because of the drought, and he hides out with a widow and her son. The son dies. Elijah lays himself over the son and prays and brings the boy back to life. It's this remarkable, remarkable story. This whole time, Ahab is trying to hunt him down and kill him, but he can't find him. And so there's this drought happening. Everybody is mad at Ahab for allowing the drought to happen because it's happening under his rule. No one's growing any crops. The country is doing terribly. And in Ahab's view, it's Elijah's fault. Three years later, Elijah decides it's time to meet up with Ahab. So he meets up with an old prophet friend of his, a guy named Obadiah. Obadiah has a book at the end of the Old Testament in the Minor Prophets. And he tells Obadiah in this really interesting conversation, and honestly, you should go read it. It's before this. This conversation with Obadiah is in chapter 17 and then part of 18. You should read this conversation that Elijah has with Obadiah. I don't have time to jump into it this morning, but it really proves for us that when God asks us to do hard things, he's going to see us through in that difficult season. So he goes to Obadiah. He says, go tell Ahab that I want to come see him. And then eventually they meet up. And when they meet up, Ahab says, oh, you troubler of Israel, to Elijah. And Elijah says, that's not me, man. That's you. That's you. And as a matter of fact, we're going to settle this. I want you to go gather all 450 of your prophets of Baal. And I want you to gather the 400 prophets of Asherah. And I want you to meet me on Mount Carmel on this day. And we're going to assemble all of Israel. So that's the stage. They're on Mount Carmel. I had the opportunity when I went several years ago to Israel to go be on Mount Carmel and look around. In northern Israel, there is lush farmland that is a lot more green than you think it would be. And Mount Carmel, you're able to see all of that from there. And you can look across the way and see the Mount of Transfiguration for those that know your New Testament well. And it was kind of a surreal experience to be there knowing that all of these events that I'm about to tell you about took place on this small hill, really, in northern Israel. And so they assemble all of Israel. Everybody comes. The families come and they assemble on the mountain, around the mountain, at the top of the mountain. All the 450 prophets of Baal are there. Ahab is there. Elijah is there. And Elijah begins to address the crowd. And this is what Elijah says. I pick it up in verse 22. Then Elijah said to the people, I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord. So he says, I'm the only one left. I'm the only prophet standing. Now, it's important to note put no fire on it. They're in it. They are there. And he says, here's the deal. We're going to get two bulls. I'm going to give one. See how they've got 450 people and I've just got me? I'm going to give one to the 450, to the prophets of Baal, and I'm going to take one of the bulls. And then I want you guys, you go and you build an altar. You cut the bull into pieces and you put that bull on the altar. I'm going to go over here. I'm going to build my altar. I'm going to cut the bull into pieces and put it on my altar. And then here's what we're going to do. We're going to pray to our gods. I'm going to pray to God, the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the people of Israel, the God of the people who are here. And you pray to your God. You pray to Baal. And whichever one sends fire down first to light these altars on fire and burn up these bulls, that's the God. All right, that's it. And then we're done. Everybody good? And everybody says, Ahab says, the prophets say, the people say, it is well spoken. Deal. We agree. They spit in their hands. They shook them. Back when you could do that. This is the showdown. So Elijah, kind of like the cat that swallowed the canary, he's like, listen, Baal, you guys, go ahead. Just go ahead, build your altar. I'm just going to chill out over here. You just, you go over there, you pick the bull you want, you'll cut it up, put it on the altar that you make, And then you get to praying. And I'll be over here, and I'm just going to chill out for a second. I picture Elijah getting one of those camping chairs and kind of folding it out and sitting it down. And then maybe cracking something open and sitting in the camping chair and just kind of chilling out watching. Going, good luck, suckers. And they get to it, man. Those prophets of Baal, they get to it. They start weeping and wailing, and the Bible says limping around the altar. They're doing this and that. And you've kind of seen probably some clips somewhere in your life, some pagan ceremonies where there's this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and crying out and dancing and chanting and whatever it is that they do. And they did this. Can you imagine the scene of 450 prophets crying out to their God who doesn't exist, trying to get him to bring fire from heaven, what they must have been doing, the show that they must have been putting on. Meanwhile, Elijah's just sitting over there watching them, right? It says they did this until noon. They did it all morning long for hours. They're just dancing and prancing and chanting and raving and ranting and weeping and wailing, and nothing is happening. And so Elijah decides to talk a little smack. I love this. I love this line in the Bible. I love that Elijah says this. The fact that this is included in Scripture tells me that there is space in God's kingdom for sarcastic jerks. And it just, man, it warms my heart. It makes me think there might be space in God's kingdom for people like me because this is what Elijah says to them. He says in verse 27, and at noon Elijah mocked them. Okay, so the Bible, I'm not making this up, the Bible's saying he is making fun of them. He said, cry aloud, for he is a God. Either he is musing or he is relieving himself, that's my favorite one. Surely he's there. Maybe he's musing. Maybe he's just messing with you. Maybe he's just up there just kind of waiting until you do something right. Maybe, now I don't know what's going on with Baal's constitution, but maybe he's got a little tummy ache. Maybe he's in the bathroom. I don't know how long it takes him in there, but he's a god, so it could be pretty serious. I'm not really sure. Maybe, I tell you what, maybe he's on a journey. Maybe he just went out of town. Maybe he ran to Asheville real quick. He's going to be right back. Just keep it up. He is making fun of them, man, and it is great. And after he makes fun of them, it says that they began to cut themselves with swords and lances until the blood gushed as was their custom. So now they're ranting and raving and prancing and dancing and chanting and now they're screaming out and they're cutting themselves and they're stabbing themselves with lances and the blood is flowing all to appeal to this God that does not exist. And there's this great sentence in the Bible after all this happens, it says, but there was no voice, no one answered, no one paid attention. Isn't that a sobering sentence for what happens when we cry out to gods that don't exist? Isn't that a sobering response for what happens when we place our hope in a thing that doesn't deserve it? When we do that, eventually we're met with the response that no one listened, no one pays attention, no one is hearing what we are saying. And no one heard the prophets of Baal. There's no God there to hear them. They were wasting their time. They looked foolish and Elijah pointed it out. After they had done their thing, Elijah goes back over to his altar. Now the first thing he does is, he says, people of Israel, gather around. Come here. Come here. I want you to see this. Get in real tight. And he grabs 12 stones, and he makes an altar with those 12 stones. And he does that very intentionally. Whenever people from Israel see 12 stones, they are reminded of the altar that their forefather Joshua built when God in his goodness brought them across the Jordan River out of Egyptian oppression. The very first thing he did is build an altar of 12 stones as a sign and a symbol and remembrance of a God who is righteous and keeps his promise. And so Elijah, by building this altar with 12 stones, is telling them, do you remember this God? This God that brought you here? This God that gave you this land? Each stone represents a tribe of Israel, represents God's goodness. So he's doing this to make a point. Look, gather around. And he builds an altar with 12 stones. Then he takes the wood and he puts it on top of the altar so that there's something to burn. Then he takes the bull, he cuts it up, and he places the bull on top of the wood. Then he looks at the people and he says, go fill these barrels with water and come back and dump it on the altar. And he makes them do that three times until water is running down the altar, everything on it is soaked, and then there's a trench dug around the altar, and that is filled with water too. And then it's time for Elijah to cry out to his God to see if his God won't send some flames, because Baal hasn't done it yet. And rather than ranting or raving or dancing or chanting or cutting himself or making this big, huge scene. This is what Elijah Lord. Answer me that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have turned their hearts back. I'm going to pause right there. Can you picture in your mind the juxtaposition of the two prophets, two sets of prophets, the prophets of Baal who were just carrying on and ranting and raving and causing this huge scene, 450 of them just messing around all day, just causing this huge stir and this huge scene all day, cutting themselves and being dramatic about it and just all this over-the-top flailing. And then for Elijah, when it comes time to appeal to his God, he simply gathers the people around and he prays quietly because he knows that his God can hear him. He knows his God doesn't have to shout out. He doesn't have to shout out in a certain way to get God to pay attention. He knows that he doesn't have to do a certain dance or a certain chant to get his God to pay attention. He knows that God hears all the minds of his head and his heart and his mouth. And so he starts to pray. And I don't even think he prayed to make sure that God could hear him. I think he prayed for the benefit of the people around him. And he prays that beautiful prayer. The Lord God of Israel. He appeals to him to send down fire. I love the juxtaposition of those two types of appeals. And when he finished, when he prayed God. The Lord, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the great I am from the burning bush that rescued us from Egypt, that delivered us into Israel, that gave us the ground that we're standing on, that Lord, he is God, not Baal. That's the story of the showdown between the prophet of God, Elijah, and the prophets of Baal. And I love that story. I love so much about it. Many of you know it and love it too. And as I approached it this week, I knew I was going to be preaching about it. I thought, goodness, I was kind of excited to sit down and begin to study and just kind of say, God, what are you going to show me this week? What's going to leap off the page this week? What point is going to come out of this? How would you have us apply this to our life? And as I read, I saw this verse at the beginning of the story that I intentionally skipped as I began today that suddenly reframed the entire story for me. I've read this story a dozen times, but for some reason I've never noticed this verse before. But as I noticed it this time, it reshaped the whole story for me, and I hope that it will reshape it for you. What I see here is that this story of the showdown between the prophet of God and the prophets of Baal, the story is bracketed by these two verses that are absolutely incredible. The second one, the take home, is what we just discovered, is the people going, you are the Lord. He is God. Repeating it, the Lord, he is God. Which in that moment is a confession. It's an admission. It's a repentance and an apology. Yes, the Lord is God. Baal is not. But I want you to see this verse at the beginning of the story, verse 21, that when I read it, it reshaped for me the entire way I think about this story. Now, look at what Elijah says to them. I told you that he gathered them up on the mountain. I told you that he got everyone around him and he laid out the rules of the game. But before he laid out the rules of the game, look at what he says. This is amazing to me. Verse 21, and Elijah came near to all the people and said, You say, listen, listen Israel. And this is a depiction of what a prophet is supposed to do. When we think of a prophet, we tend to think of people who tell the future and mystical in some way. But this is what a prophet does. A prophet says hard things to a hardened people. And he looked at Israel and he says, how long are you going to keep straddling the fence between God and Baal? How long are you going to embrace Baal when that works for you and embrace God when that works for you? How much longer will you insist on doing this? And you get the idea that these people of Israel kind of worshipped whatever God was going to serve them best in the moment. That around some people they feared the Lord and around some people they honored Baal. And in some places they put on these masks and these clothes and other places they put on these masks and these clothes. Neither of their following was sincere. None of their faith was authentic and deep and meaningful. They were just putting on whichever God was good for them in the moment. They weren't committed to either. And Elijah says, enough of this. How long will you continue to straddle the fence? How long will you continue to limp along between two opinions? Let's settle this today. And if Baal brings fire from heaven, then great, we're going to worship Baal. But man, if God brings fire from heaven, then knock it off with the Baal stuff and let's follow God. Do you realize that that's the reason for the whole showdown? Do you realize that the whole reason that Elijah did this, that he comes out of hiding, that he goes to Ahab, that he says, assemble your prophets, do it on Mount Carmel, that all this fanfare, that he tells the people of Israel, come and be here, that he tells them, gather around me as I pray. Do you understand that the entire exercise was done not because Elijah had something with Ahab, not for Elijah to defeat Ahab, not for Elijah to overcome the prophets, but for the Lord to win back the hearts of his people. That was the goal. And he starts off the whole day by saying, how long are you going to straddle the fence, guys? How long are you going to pretend to follow God sometimes and pretend to follow Baal other times? Let's just settle this right now. And if God proves that he is God, then let's knock it off with the Baal stuff. And then the showdown happens. And at the end, we see their wonderful response. The Lord, Yahweh, He is God. And they worship Him alone. The whole point of the showdown was for God to win back the hearts of his people. And as I read this this week, it was an absolute punch in the gut to read that sentence, how long will you go limping between two opinions? Because how many of us can relate to that? How many of us listening do that? How many of you listening? Listen, it's just you in your living room, okay? And the people around you already know if this is true of you or not. So you're the only one you're trying to fool. How many of you in your living room have a face that you put on at church and a face that you put on at work? How many of us, me included, have a face that we put on around church people and a face that we put on around comfortable friends? How many of us straddle the line between these two opinions that in work and in our profession, we go out and we kill it and we crush it and we kill and we eat and that's great. And we act a certain way with certain morals and a certain moral compass there and then when we get around church people we have a different moral compass here. How many of us straddle the line between standards that we have for ourselves and then things that we accuse other people of? A lot of us, a lot of us, we're being honest, we're going to be super critical of what so and so over here does and not have any grace for them while we forgive the same sin in ourself over and over again. How many of us, listen, I'm sorry, this is so personal, how many of us teach our children things that we don't even do? How often in your life have you said what you believe with your mouth and then shown what you really believe with your actions? This kicked me right in the teeth this week. All of us, at some point, go limping along, straddling the line between two opinions, between two versions of ourselves. And I believe that this showdown wasn't just for the people of Israel, but that it's here in 1 Kings 18 to echo through the centuries for us today so that it would get our attention and that when Elijah looks at Israel and says, how long will you go limping between two opinions? He's looking dead at you, asking you the same question. How long are you going to straddle the fence, man? How much further is this hypocrisy going to go? Because I thought about this for myself this week. These two opinions that war within our hearts, they manifest themselves in different ways, right? The standards that we have for ourselves versus for other people, the face that we put on here versus there. They're going to manifest themselves in different ways, but at the heart of it, the difference of opinion that's happening is really this war between two ideas. And I think we claim one of these ideas every day. It's what we want to claim, what we know we should claim, what the people of Israel claim, which is the Lord, He is God. And then there's what happens in our heart, which is He may be God, but I'm the Lord. Those are the two opinions. The Lord, He is God. He is good. He is the Alpha and the omega. He is the Lord of my life. I will follow him. This is the fundamental confession of salvation, is that the Lord is God and that I will follow him. I am submitted to his leadership in my life. And then the idea that wars with that, which is the Lord may be God, or he may be God, but I'm the Lord. Yeah, he's God, and I believe in him, for sure. But today, I'm doing what Nate wants. Today, Nate's calling the shots. Today, Nate decides what's good and what's not. He's God. Absolutely, he's God. I believe he's God. But today, I call the shots. These are the opinions that war in each of our hearts. The Lord, he is God. He is good. I trust him. I will follow him. I will live according to him. I will submit to him. And then, yeah, the Lord, he's God. But today I'm the Lord. Today I'm doing what I think is right. And I think that this showdown happened not just to show us that God was superior to Baal, not just to wake up the hearts of his people in Israel and ask them, when are you going to draw the line? How long will you limp between these two opinions? But I think the reason this is here is to look at us thousands of years later and have us ask the question of ourselves, how long will I straddle the line between two opinions? How many more days will I get up and will I say, yeah, he's God, but today I'm Lord? How many more times are we going to do that? I think being a Christian is to make that claim that he is the Lord, he is God. God is the Lord of my life. And every day it's a battle to reclaim that and say, yeah, he's God, but I'm the Lord. And I wanted to preach this this morning and really be forceful with it so that we might ask, in all honesty and transparency, how long will I straddle the line between these two opinions? How many more days will I wake up and say, yeah, he's God, but I'm the Lord? And so I thought I would leave you with this simple question. What are you going to need in your life to make the confession that the Israelites made and make it every day? Will this showdown be enough? Will 1 Kings 18 be enough? Will what Elijah did thousands of years ago when once and for all God is the God of gods and it's settled and it's done, stop limping between two opinions, knock it off with the Baal stuff and follow God. It was enough for the people of Israel. Will it be enough for you? Or will you require your own showdown? I can only speak for me and say that I hope it's enough for me. I have no interest in a showdown with God. I hope that for many of us listening, we will quit straddling the line. We will quit confessing that he is God, but then believing that we are Lord. And that we will walk in such a way that with both our mouth and our heart and our actions, we will declare every day, the Lord, He is God. Let's pray. Father, Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You are God. You are good. You sent your son so that we might call you Lord. You sent your son to invite us in. And yet so many of us in so many ways, seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, we often reclaim that lordship. I, more than anyone, limp along between two opinions. Father, would you help those of us who are limping? Those of us who are wandering, would you draw us back? God, would you let this showdown be enough so that we don't require our own? Lord, let us feel even this morning your warmth, your embrace, your love, your approval, your desire for us. Let us declare from this day forward that you are the Lord and that you are God. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's good to be here with you in this way again. I'm so excited for August the 16th when we resume our in-person gatherings. On August the 16th, we're going to have the opportunity to participate in church in our home or yours. So for those of you who want to come and experience live church and see your church family and socially distance from the people that you've missed so much. I know that some of you have young kids and you really do want to come and you really do want to be a part of things, but we're also not able to offer children's ministry yet. So you kind of love the idea of coming and seeing folks and participating in worship, but might not feel great about trying to entertain a three or four or five-year-old during a boring sermon. And I totally get that. We have a four-year-old of our own. So if you want to come, bring your family, participate in worship, see your church family that you've missed so much, and then head home once the sermon starts, I just want you to know that's not going to hurt my feelings. I totally understand that. And if that helps you participate in the 16th and that's something you'd like to do, then we want to make that a possibility. So if that's something you want to do, please don't feel bad about that. I encourage that. I can't wait to see everybody who's willing to come on the 16th. And for those who are willing to wait, or feel they need to wait, I totally understand that, respect that, and look forward to seeing you whenever you feel comfortable venturing out. This morning we jump into the second part of our series called The Time of Kings. We're going to look at a story about the fourth king of Israel, a man named Rehoboam, that I love. If you read the Grace Vine, I said this week that this is another one of those sermons that I've wanted to preach for years. I love this lesson of the mistake of Rehoboam and how easily applicable it is to our lives today. By the way, if you just thought, man, I didn't get the Grace Vine, I don't see that, please let us know. Email me or email info at graceralee.org and we will get you on that email distribution list. But like I said, I've been looking forward to preaching this sermon. And for a little bit of context, as we just dive into scripture, we're going to end up in 1 Kings chapter 12. This is when we're introduced to Rehoboam. So if you have a Bible there at home, I hope that you'll grab that and open it up. Again, if you have folks around you, particularly kids, open up the Scripture and look at that text together. I can't tell you enough how important it is to go through text, to interact with Scripture as a family. Rehoboam comes after King Solomon. So the context for where we see this story is, last week we talked about Israel clamoring for a king. They wanted a king. God said it was a bad idea. They rejected God, and God said, just go ahead, Samuel, and give them a king. So they appointed a king named Saul. Saul was an egomaniac. He made it all about him and his kingdom and his wealth, and so God took his kingdom from him. He said, I regret making Saul king. And then he named Jesse, the son of David, the king over Israel. David, to this day, is the greatest king that Israel has ever had. The second greatest king, without hesitation, that Israel has ever had is David's son, King Solomon. Solomon, you'll know, is, according to the Bible, the wisest man to ever live. He wrote a bulk of the wisdom books that we find in the Old Testament. He wrote Proverbs and Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. I love the book of Proverbs that was written by Solomon as a letter to his son of just short snippets of wisdom. And as a matter of fact, as an aside, if you're someone who thinks, you know, I would love to read the Bible more. If you've heard me say before that there's no greater habit, there's no more important habit than anyone can develop in their life than to get up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. And you think to yourself, man, I need to do that. I would love to do that, but I don't know where to start. The Bible is really difficult to understand. It's 66 books. It spans thousands of years. It's a really difficult document to understand, and it's difficult to just drop parachute into a portion of it and know everything that's going on around us. So sometimes when we decide that we want to read the Bible, we dive into it and we don't understand it, and so then we put it away because it becomes frustrating. If that's your story, let me encourage you to start reading in Proverbs. Proverbs has 31 chapters. You can read whatever chapter corresponds with the date of that day. Just open it up, read a chapter, put it down. Proverbs is great because if you're skeptical about faith, if you don't know if you can trust the Bible or not, Proverbs is a great thing to pick up, to read, and to try to apply to your life. Is this truth going to work for me? If I do this, am I going to find out that it's true? It's a way to put the Bible to the test. It's also a book that doesn't require context. You can just jump right into it and start to read, and things are going to make sense to you without having to know the context of the rest of Scripture. So if you have a hard time reading the Bible, if you don't know where to start, Proverbs is a great place to start. If you have people in your life who want to read the Bible and they're asking you, where should I start? That's where I tell everybody to start is the book of Proverbs. And Solomon wrote that. And we think of Solomon, rightly so, as a righteous man because he wrote books of the Bible. He prayed to God. He prayed for wisdom when he could have had anything that he wanted. But it's also worth noting that later in Solomon's life, in many ways, he turned away from God. He took many hundred wives, he took a thousand concubines, he married for political reasons. Later in his life, he built an army. He built the first large standing army that Israel ever had, and he did that by taxing the people heavily. He built monuments and public works, and he did that by enslaving the people harshly. And so later in his life, Solomon became a really harsh king. To live in Israel under the reign of Solomon was not a pleasurable experience. History smiles on Solomon for his contributions, but if you were one of his subjects during his reign, you would not have enjoyed the reign of Solomon. So when Solomon dies, the mantle of the role of king goes to Rehoboam. It passes to Rehoboam. And when he's named king, you'll see in chapter 12, the people of Israel come to Rehoboam and they clamor for him. And they say, please take it easier on us. Your dad was so harsh on us. He was so ruthless. He taxed us heavily. He enslaved our children and us. Please don't do that to us. Can you please be a kinder, gentler king? And Rehoboam's response to them is telling. Rehoboam said, give me three days. Let me think about it. To which I kind of feel like that's your first indicator that Rehoboam's not really thinking very clearly. That seems to be a no-brainer, doesn't it? A group of people comes to you and they say, hey, can you please try to not be a tyrannical dictator? Can you please like lower the taxes so that we can experience some wealth and pour that back into the country? Can you please do that for us? Can you please like not take us as slaves? It should be a no-brainer to go, yeah, okay, that seems reasonable. But Rehoboam says, let me take three days and go think about this. So during those three days, he assembles his dad's old advisors, basically the cabinet of King Solomon. And he goes to them and he says, the people have asked me to take it easy on them. What do you think I should do? And Solomon's advisors give him good, wise, sound advice, the same advice that you would likely give that I would likely give to Rehoboam. And they tell him, you should listen to the people. If you will ease up on them just a little bit, man, I'm telling you, they're going to love you forever. You should heed their desires. Do what they're asking. Be gentle with them. Be kind to them. Be softer with them. You don't have to be as hard as your dad. You can be a different kind of king, Rehoboam. Listen to us. And listen, these are the men who walked through the fires with Solomon. These are the men who were right next to Solomon and watched him become ruthless and watched him become authoritarian and watched what it did to the people around him. They had led through the nuances of leadership. They understood everything that hung in the balance. And this is like easy leadership decision. Take it easy on the people and we can see, hindsight's 20-20, you can see as well as I can, that if Rehoboam would have just been kind to them, if he would have just said, yeah, okay, I'm going to be nice. I'm not going to be the kind of king that my dad was. That those people would have loved him. Those people would have served him. They would have run through a wall for him. But this was the advice of the old guard. This was the advice of his dad's advisors. And clearly it wasn't the advice that he was looking for. Because after receiving this advice, Rehoboam goes to his friends, the guys that he grew up with. And this is what they tell him. Look in 1 Kings 12. I'm going to begin reading in verse 8. Verse 8 says, but he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him. So the old man said, take it easy on him, be nice to him, be the king that they want and that they need, and he abandoned that. He said, no, I'm not interested, and so he goes to his young friends and he asked, what do you guys think I should do? And he said to them, My little finger is thicker than my father's thighs. And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. Which, by the way, as an aside, this week I learned that scorpions are worse than whips. I would not have thought that 10 days ago, but now I understand that's actually worse. He goes to his friends. He receives the counsel from the old men who say, be the king that they need. And his friends go, no way. Don't tell them that. You need to go tell those people that your little finger is thicker than your father's thigh, that you have more power and more authority in your little finger than he did in his whole body. You need to go tell them that if they were scared of your dad, they need to be terrified of you. Your dad disciplined with whips. You're coming at them with scorpions. Your dad enslaved this many. You're going to enslave this many. Your dad pushed them this hard. You're going to push them harder. You need Rehoboam to go strike fear into their hearts and into their minds and let them know that you are not a king to be trifled with. They built up his ego. He said, go tell them you're a bad dude, man. And Rehoboam, who grew up watching his dad, who was a young man, and as we know, young men feel this desperation to make their mark and to stake their claim and to gain the respect of everyone. And so he clumsily forced it, and he goes back to the people after three days, and he says exactly what his friends told him to say. Forget you guys. You want me to go easy on you? I'm not going to. You think my dad was bad? Get a load of this. You see the slaves my dad took? I'm going to take more. You see how hard my dad worked you? I'm going to work you harder. And he just set up from the very beginning this ruthless, tyrannical dictatorship where he said, I'm the man and you can't mess with me. And what Rehoboam failed to consider is that there was another guy named Jeroboam. Jeroboam was a rival of his dad and rose up at one point to overthrow Solomon and when that wasn't successful, fled to Egypt. And when Solomon died, Jeroboam comes back to Israel and listens to Rehoboam say this. And after he says that, Jeroboam knows that he's going to have enough support for what a jerk Rehoboam is, that he can garner a military and take over part of the kingdom. And as a result of Rehoboam's pride and selfishness and short-sightedness and refusal to listen to wisdom, Jeroboam took 90% of his kingdom from him. And like I said last week, within four kings, Israel descends into a civil war, the result of which we now have the northern kingdoms that are led by Jeroboam and the southern kingdoms that are led by Rehoboam. The northern kingdom had 10 tribes in it. The southern kingdom had two. Rehoboam loses 90% of his kingdom because he made a selfish, egotistical decision. And I've always loved this story because it stands out as a stark warning to avoid the folly of Rehoboam, to avoid this big mistake. So when we planned out this series, and I was flipping through the books of 1 and 2 Kings, wondering what am I going to teach to grace, and I came across this story, I knew I was going to teach it. I knew that I had to highlight it. And so as I sat down this week and began to interact with it, the question becomes, well, what's the point? What do we take away from this? What's the application to us in our lives here in 2020? What's the application to grace? And, you know, I've always taken this as a warning to listen to the older voices in your life. For most of my ministry career, I've thought of myself as young. I realize that those days are fleeting now. Just this week, Lily put her hand on my stomach and she said, Daddy, you have a fat, fat belly and you have a lot of gray hair in your beard. You look like a grandpa, Daddy. So clearly my young days are behind me. But in my young days, I would look at this and I would think, this is a warning to heed the older voices in your life. And it is. But I don't think that those are the only voices that we should listen to. And so then I thought, well, this is a warning to heed the advice, to listen to the voices that God places in your life. And you have this juxtaposition, this comparing and contrasting between the old guard that God placed in his life and the friends that he chose to put in his own life. But you know, honestly, I believe that God puts friends in our lives that we should listen to, and so I would never tell us not to listen to our godly friends. And so the more I thought about it, what's the lesson from this mistake, from this episode in the life of Rehoboam? I realized that the overarching message here is to listen to wisdom. Listen to wisdom. And I know this is not an earth-shattering point for a sermon. I'm aware of this. That's why we have it in all caps there at the bottom of the screen, to make fun of me for making this the point of the sermon. But it is. It's the point. It's what comes out of the story of Rehoboam. You know what we should do when we read this story and we look at this mistake that he made and we see what it costed him? You know what we should take away from this? We should take away from this that we should listen to godly wisdom. But even as I say that, it's not a shocker that a pastor would say in a sermon that we should listen to wisdom. That's a pretty simple thing. We know that. You know that. And Rehoboam knew that. And because of that, because we all know that we should listen to wisdom, we all know that the wise way is the best way, the more interesting discussion becomes, why do we have such a hard time hearing and heeding wisdom? If we all know that we should listen to wisdom, if we all know that we should obey the Bible, let's just put it down to brass tacks. If we all know that we should do the things that this book tells us to do, and we should not do the things that this book tells us not to do, but we keep not doing the things we should do, and we keep doing the things that we shouldn't do, what that means is we have a problem listening to wisdom. And so the question becomes, why is it that we have such a difficult time hearing and heeding wisdom? If we all know that we should listen to it, if we all know that we should obey what God says in his word, if we all know that there are voices in our life that tend to tell us the right thing even when it's the hard thing, why is it that we continue to have a hard time hearing that wisdom and heeding that wisdom and abiding by it in our own life? And I think that this is a fair question to ask of Rehoboam, because if there's anybody who knew that they should value wisdom, it's Rehoboam. If there's anyone ever in the history of the world that was poised to be a good king and to learn to listen to wisdom, to be able to hear it and heed it, it was Rehoboam. Think about it. Rehoboam's granddad was David, the guy who wrote Psalms. The guy who penned Psalm chapter 1, one of the most famous Psalms, maybe just behind Psalm chapter 23, where he warns people. In this case, his grandson. Do not sit in the seat of mockers or stand in the way of scorners. Do not associate with unwise people. But he says, Raybaum knows that, just like you know that. Rehoboam's dad was Solomon, who wrote the quintessential book of wisdom and addressed it to his son. I don't know if he addressed it directly to Rehoboam, but I know that Rehoboam was his son and took over as king, so it would make sense to think that Rehoboam had read it. And if you open up Proverbs and you read it, the first four chapters, all it says over and over again is get wisdom. No matter what you do, pursue wisdom. Foolish people throw off wisdom. Smart people accept wisdom. Get wisdom. Cherish it. Value it. It is greater than gold. It is greater than wealth. Get wisdom with everything that you do. This is what's poured into Rehoboam. And yet at the crucial moment, when more than any other time in his life he needed to listen to wisdom, to hear it and to heed it, he ignores it. And I think if we can look at why Rehoboam chose to ignore this wisdom in his life, what we'll find is that we can relate to those answers too. And that the same reasons that Rehoboam rejected wisdom in his life are the same reasons that we often reject wisdom in our life. So I'm going to give you three. This morning, there are more reasons than this than we have a hard time hearing and heeding wisdom. But these are the ones I think we can pull out of this story in 1 Kings chapter 12. The first reason why we often struggle to hear and heed wisdom is because wisdom doesn't care about our ego. Wisdom is wholly unconcerned with your ego. Rehoboam goes to the old guard and he says, the people want me to take it easy on them. What do you think I should do? And they told him to be the kind of king you don't want to be. He said, be gentle, man. Be loving. Be considerate. What they're really asking him to do is in your very first decision, in your very first my way or the highway moment, give in. Just give in. Just don't choose your way. Just let them have this one. You don't have to win everything. Be who they want you to be, not who you want to be. Let that respect come in a different way. Don't demand it of them. And then he went to his friends. And what did his friends do? They appealed to his ego. I got more strength in my finger than my father did in his whole body. If you thought he was tough, wait until you get a load of me. It was all ego. It was just being young and dumb and wanting to make a name for himself and being blinded by this appeal to his ego. And wisdom never cares about your ego. I remember a while back I was doing a wedding. And I was at the rehearsal in the rehearsal there's a little bit of a squabble between the husband and the bride-to-be. The husband wanted somebody else in his wedding party and the bride said that couldn't happen because that would be an odd number of people and it would throw off the entrance and the pictures and the whole deal and it was I mean, the bride's clearly right. It was a bad scene. And so they're frustrated at each other, and we're off to the side. I'm standing there with the groom and his best man, who happens to be his brother. And right before we're about to start the rehearsal, they're kind of fired up about it, and the groom's brother looks at him and he says, man, you just need to tell her. You just need to go right now. You go over there and you tell her that you're the man. This is your marriage. You're the man in this marriage. You make more money than she does and it's going to be your way and this person's going to be in your wedding. And I wasn't going to be disrespectful to the brother. But I had done some counseling with this couple, and I knew this guy well enough that I just kind of stood there quietly, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I just went, that's terrible advice. Terrible advice for tons of reasons. But what it was on its face was an appeal to his ego. Foolishness appeals to our ego. You go be a man and you go be tough. No, that's stupid. That's not manly or tough. That's Neanderthalic. Don't do that. It's not going to help you do anything. Wisdom never comes in a package that appeals to our ego. It's always going to push us to do the kind thing. It's always going to push us to do the patient thing. It's always going to push us to take a back seat. Some of us with big egos have a hard time with wisdom because it doesn't kowtow to that. It just tells us the truth and we have to have the guts to walk in it. That's why Jesus says, when someone hits you, you should turn the other cheek. That's why we're told that a soft answer turns away wrath. That's why we're told in James that we should be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry. That doesn't appeal to our ego, but that's the right thing to do. I think often we have a hard time heeding wisdom because it never comes in a package that strokes our ego. And for some of us, that's a thing that we have to get over. Rehoboam couldn't get over it, and so he made the wrong choice. Another reason that Rehoboam had a hard time hearing and heeding wisdom that I think we can relate to is that wisdom is rarely efficient. It's rarely efficient. Rehoboam wanted to get things done. He saw the works that his dad did. He saw the army that his dad did, and he wanted to do that too. He wanted to make a bigger army. He wanted to construct bigger things. And to do that right away within the next five to ten years, I've got to tax the people more heavily so I can make a bigger army. I've got to enslave more people so I can build bigger things. I've got to charge more taxes so I can get my things done. I can't let them off the hook, old guard, because if I do, then I can't accomplish the things that I want to accomplish. Wisdom often seems inefficient. It reminds me of one of my favorite Proverbs. In Proverbs 25, verse 15, it says, Sometimes in conflict. We just want to jump in with two feet and just make it happen and say all the things and give vent to everything that we're feeling and try to win the day when really a soft tongue breaks bones. Isn't this true in our marriages? When our spouse does something that bothers us? Sometimes we just want to jump on them with two feet. Hey, why'd you do that? I didn't deserve that. That's not fair. You shouldn't do that to me. You shouldn't treat me like that. You shouldn't expect that of me. When our husband or our wife bothers us, sometimes we just want to jump on them with two feet because we feel like we have every right to. But that's probably not what's wise. What's wise is to probably wait and to bite our tongue and to wonder what's motivating that choice. What's going on in their day and in their week and in their life? Let me just wait and see if they do it again. And then if they do, I'm going to approach this in a way that maybe can be helpful to everyone. But we live in a culture that just wants everything right now. And so we often throw off wisdom because it doesn't seem efficient. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this in the spiritual development of others and even in myself. Somebody comes to faith or gets reignited in their faith and they want to understand scripture. They want to be able to lead Bible studies. They want to be able to teach other people. And it's hard to accept that this takes a long time to learn. It's hard to accept that knowing the character of God, that knowing how to pray, that knowing how to hear the voice of God, that having a heart that beats with God, that having an understanding of the breadth of Scripture and how it all ties together and what's going on in Galatians that reaches back into the Old Testament that you need to understand so that you can understand Paul's letters and the things that Jesus says that are quotes of prophecies that he is fulfilling. It takes a long time to tie all of those together. It takes a long time to drop into the book of Romans and understand what it is that Paul is talking about and why it is such a radical gospel. But we live in a culture that wants everything right away. And I've seen so many people become believers, get ignited in their faith, start to read scripture or listen to a podcast or go to a Bible study or become more committed in their attendance for church. And they don't understand it like somebody over there understands it. It doesn't matter that that person has been walking with the Lord for 30 years. They don't understand it like that person understands it. And so they get discouraged and they walk away. And I think what we fail to realize is that this kind of wisdom is never efficient. If you come across someone who knows how to pray, when you pray with them or when you hear them pray or when they talk about their prayer life, it feels like they are literally at the throne of God, that they have this seasoned voice that you just don't have. You have to know that comes from a lifetime of prayer. That comes from worn knees and worn carpets. That comes from beating their head against the wall, wondering if these prayers are even leaving this room. That is a lifetime prayer. If you meet someone who knows the intricacies of the Bible, who knows how it weaves together, who knows which stories are talking about which person and which books are referring to which other books and how it all ties together, if you meet someone who you think has a mastery of Scripture, you have got to know that comes from a lifetime of diligent study. Spiritual growth is hard work. It is rarely efficient. But wisdom is found in that perseverance. Wisdom is interested not in short-term gain, but in long-term fruit. This is why the Bible over and over and over again encourages us to persevere and prizes perseverance as this thing that ought to be honored. Because true wisdom takes time and true wisdom will always push us towards future fruit rather than present gain. Rehoboam had a hard time with that. So he couldn't hear or heed that wisdom in his life. The last reason, and this one's my favorite, the last reason Rehoboam had a difficult time hearing and heeding wisdom and the same reason that we have a difficult time sometimes hearing and heeding wisdom is that wisdom is often dumber than us. Come on. Come on, egomaniacs. Come on, guys. Those of you who understand me, it takes one to know one. Wisdom is often dumber than you, isn't it? It often comes in a package that you don't respect. If you're not sure if you're an egomaniac, here's a good test. If you've ever been in a room full of other people that you respect and had an opinion and tried to win the room over to your opinion and you left that room and no one agreed with you and you still thought you were right, then you and me are friends. Because I've done that before too. But that's a pretty good indicator that for one reason or another we're not accepting wisdom because we think that wisdom is dumber than us. We think we're smarter than the room. And sometimes that arrogance comes in the form of defiance, of loud defiance. Nope, y'all are all wrong and I'm right. Sometimes, though, it comes in the form of sweet, quiet stubbornness, of just sitting on it and thinking, I'm still not going to do all the things you want me to do. Sometimes it comes in this stubborn refusal to receive help. No, I still have it all together. It's all the same thing. It's all the same ego. It's us thinking we're the smartest ones in the room. It's us thinking I know better than these people that are telling me this thing. And Rehoboam's problem was that he was told truth. He was given wisdom, but he didn't respect the package that it came in. He thought you bunch of old men. You don't know what you're talking about. I watched you advise my dad. He probably took pot shots at their leadership, which is way easier to do when you're not the one making decisions. And he said, I'm not gonna listen to you guys. And Rehoboam very easily and swiftly sidestepped the wisdom because he didn't respect the package that it came in. And how often in our lives do we reject wisdom because we don't respect the package that it comes in? I remember when I first started writing sermons back at my previous church when they started asking me to preach. I would spend days coming up with a sermon. I would look at a text. I would think, what are the points here? What can we do? How do I want to approach this? What's the point that I want to make? And then once I felt like I had that, I would go to Jen. I would go to my wife and I would say, hey, here's the text. Here's the way I think I want to approach it. Here's the points that I think I want to make. What do you think of this? And most of the time she would go, I think that sounds really great. You do that. That sounds good. I'm looking forward to hearing this. But every now and again, she would say, uh, that's, uh, I don't think that's very good. She would say, I know that you think that's the point that the text is making. I got to tell you, I don't see it. She would say, I think you might want to take another go at that. I'm not sure that that's super good. And at the time, all I was interested in was her telling me, that's great. This is going to be the best sermon ever. I can't believe you're smart enough to come up with these things on your own. How do you do it? But instead, she says, you may want to go back to the starting board on that one. And I remember in my arrogance, thinking to myself, what do you know? You don't preach sermons. You've never had to do this before. You didn't go to preaching school like I did. You haven't been through seminary. You don't work at a church. Why am I asking you anyways? And I would go away mad at her that she didn't believe in me and get back into the text and try to write the sermon and keep butting my head up against a brick wall. And then one day it would dawn on me a week later, I think Jen was probably right. Maybe this isn't such a good sermon. And my arrogance in that situation, I didn't have respect for the package that the wisdom came in. Now, when she tells me a sermon isn't good, I'm like, well then, we can just slide this one over here. I don't think I need to do that one anymore because I've learned that I can trust her. I've learned that I respect her and her opinion. But often when wisdom comes packaged in a way that we don't respect, in a way that we don't look up to, we reject it. We reject the message because we don't trust the messenger. Isn't this what people do with faith? A lot of people who have a hard time accepting this is true think to themselves, this was written 2,000 years ago. How does it apply to me? Jesus taught these things to an ancient crowd that didn't have the nuanced understanding of life in the universe like we do. What did he know that I don't know? And we find ways to discount what's in the Bible in ways that we shouldn't really listen to Jesus in this instance or Paul in that instance. And I think what we'll find often when we are rejecting wisdom is that we're rejecting it because we don't respect the vessel. And if we'll stop doing that and just listen to the message and get over ourselves, we will learn lessons a lot more quickly and a lot less painfully. If I would have just listened to Jen and gotten over myself, which should have been really easy to do because I wasn't that impressive of a person and I'm still not, I would have had a lot easier time writing those sermons. If Rehoboam would just get over himself, he would have had a lot easier time being king. I wonder how many times in our own life if we would just get over ourselves and accept the wisdom or accept the help or accept the advice, how much better it would go for us. This morning, the lesson that we take away from Rehoboam's mistake that cost him the kingdom is that we should listen to wisdom. And I want us to acknowledge that often we have a difficult time hearing and heeding wisdom because wisdom doesn't care anything about our ego. Wisdom is often inefficient, often choosing the fruits of the future rather than the gains of the present. And that sometimes God and his goodness packages wisdom in a vessel that we don't respect and we have to get over ourselves and hear it anyways. And I hope that we will listen to this lesson, to the wisdom coming out of the story of Rehoboam through the centuries and heed it in our own lives. And that this summer, this year, in this difficult time, we can be people who hear and heed wisdom. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. You are patient with us. Lord, with those of us who have voices in our life right now that are giving us good wisdom, would you please give us the strength to hear it? Would you please give us the courage to enact it? If our egos are getting in the way of lessons that we should be learning and voices that we should be hearing, would you sweep those aside? Father, if we're rejecting a message because in our arrogance we don't trust the messenger, would you help us see ourselves more accurately and the vessels that you've placed in our life more accurately? Lord, would you make us a people who hear and recognize and heed and obey your wisdom in our lives? In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to be here with you in this way again. This week, we're jumping into a new series called The Time of Kings. You should know by now, if you've been a part of Grace for any period of time, that I love the Old Testament. I love the stories. I love the characters. I love the nuance. I love the way that diving into the Old Testament not only makes the Bible come alive, but sheds new and helpful light on the Old Testament. And whenever we do a series in the Old Testament and tell some of these stories from that period of time and that portion of the Bible, one of my hopes is that if nothing else, the Bible will come alive for you and you'll enjoy diving into it on your own. I hope that this whets your appetite or inspires you to dive into Scripture and read these stories on your own. We're going to be looking at the books of 1 and 2 Kings. We have a reading plan to go along with this series. That's on our website. So if you'll go there, graceralee.org slash live, you can find our reading plan. Many of you are on it right now and follow through the books of 1 and 2 Kings with us. It won't be exhaustive, but if you want to get ahead of it, then you can try to read in the margins and read through those books as we do this series for seven weeks. I'm excited about this series because the first and second Kings kind of covers a large narrative arc in the Old Testament. The Old Testament from Genesis all the way up through Ezra kind of tells the story of the nation of Israel. And then the books that come after that, the wisdom books and the prophecy books, the major prophets and the minor prophets kind of give us details of different portions of that story. And a large swath of the story is covered in the books of 1 and 2 Kings. And there's all kinds of good things tucked away in these books. And we're going to highlight some of those over the next seven weeks. But by way of background, so that we know where we are in history and in the life of the nation of Israel, I wanted to kind of give you a very quick overview of how we get to the book of Kings and what's going on around the story that we're going to focus on today. So if you go back all the way to Genesis, there's a guy named Abram who lives in Ur, a Sumerian city. God comes to Abram and he says, I want you to go to this place that I'm going to show you that we know is the modern day nation of Israel. Then it was the land of Canaan. But he says, I want you to go to this place where I'm going to show you. And he makes Abram three promises for land, people, and blessing. He says, I'm going to give you this particular plot of land, which we know is modern day Israel. I'm going to make your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And the Messiah is going to come from you. And then he changes his name to Abraham. And Abraham goes and he takes his family and he goes over to the land of Canaan. And Abraham finally has a son named Isaac. Isaac has sons named Esau and Jacob. Jacob is the one through some finagling that inherits the promises of Abraham and the blessing. Jacob has 12 sons, one of whom is Joseph. Joseph is kind of pushed out of his family. They sell him into slavery. He ends up in Egypt. Fast forward 30 years, there's a famine and Jacob's 11 sons, the rest of his family moves down to Egypt where they're reunited with Joseph and they exist in prosperity in Egypt for a long time. That's pretty much the book of Genesis. Then the book of Exodus starts, the second book of the Bible. We fast forward 400 years. Moses is there. He's a descendant from Abraham and a claimant to the promises that God made to Abraham. And he's adopted into Pharaoh's family. He spends some time in the desert. God appears to him in the desert and says, I want you to go free my people. And Moses does just that. He frees slaves from the most powerful nation in the world by the hand of God. And while they're wandering around in the desert, the people of God, the Israelites, the Hebrew people, are clamoring for rules. They're like, it's not enough to just follow you, to just kind of loosely obey you. We need some policies here. And so God gives them the Ten Commandments. And then on to the Ten Commandments adds more laws through the book of Leviticus. Until in the desert, we have developed this now formalized religion that we know is Judaism. That would later become Christianity. Then while they're wandering around in the desert, Moses passes away. Joshua raises up to take over leadership in the nation of Israel. They cross the Jordan River into the promised land of Canaan that God promised Abraham. They fulfill that promise. They slowly conquer it and take it over. Once they conquer it and take it over, Joshua divides the land amongst the 12 tribes of Israel and they set up shop. In this time, immediately after taking over the land of Canaan and dividing up the land into 12 territories, they don't have a king. They're ruled periodically by judges. What would happen is God's people, Abraham's children, would periodically rebel, forget about God, do whatever it was they wanted to do, ignore God's laws, and God, to get their attention, would allow them to be oppressed, sometimes enslaved, sometimes heavily taxed, sometimes kidnapped, sometimes at war. And when they were oppressed, they would cry out to God, please save us, we know we did wrong. And God would raise up what we call a judge, and the judge would free Israel of oppression and restore them back to sovereignty, and everything was good until the Israelites forgot again and they began to sin again, forgot about God, lived how they wanted to. God would allow oppressors to come in and then God would raise up a judge when they would cry out. And this is the cycle that we're in. One of the last judges was a guy named Samuel. There's two books in the Bible named after Samuel, 1 and 2 Samuel. Samuel was born to a woman named Hannah who was barren, who prayed and committed to God, if you'll give me a son, I'll commit him to you. So as soon as Samuel was able to eat solid food, probably at about four or five years old, his mom Hannah takes him to the temple, gives him to the high priest Eli, and says this is God's son, that he belongs to God. And Samuel grows up in the temple and eventually becomes the high priest, the prophet, and the judge of Israel. And this is where we pick up the story. If you have a Bible there at home, you can actually go ahead and turn to 1 Samuel chapter 8. 1 Samuel chapter 8. Now, I know that this series is over the kings and first and second kings, and it's weird that I'm diving into Samuel on the first day. But first of all, we're going to get into kings a little bit. Second of all, this story has more to do with the meta-narrative of the story of kings. This story is how Israel got their very first king. And I think that there is a cautionary tale that comes out of this story in 1 Samuel 8 that sheds a light on the rest of the time of the kings that's important enough for us to stop and focus on this morning. So in 1 Samuel 8, Samuel's getting old. He's appointed his sons as the next judges of Israel, and they're not good at it. They're taking advantage of their position. They're corrupt, and the people of Israel are upset about this. So they come to Samuel, and they say, hey, we want a king. And listen, it's important. if you have a Bible at home, please go ahead and open to 1 Samuel 8, because I'm going to summarize a lot of this chapter, and I really want you interacting with the text and following it along and making sure that I'm not making stuff up. But the children of Israel, the people of Israel come to Samuel, and they say, hey, we want a king. And Samuel says, why do you want a king? And Israel stomps their foot and holds their breath until their face turns blue and responds like a petulant middle school child. And they basically say, because everybody else has a king and we want one too. Jordan gets to have a king. Lebanon, they get to have a king. Egypt, they get to have a king. The Babylonians have a king. We want a king too. It's not fair. Everybody else gets a king and we don't get a king. And that stinks, Samuel. Please go to God and get him to give us a king. It's really an incredibly immature attitude from a whole nation of people, which is basically, why do you want a king? Well, everybody else has a king, so we feel like we should have one too. It's the same reason your fifth grader is demanding a cell phone right now. So Samuel is troubled, and he's angered, and he goes to God. And he says, God, they're clamoring for a king. What do I do? And he's clearly taking it personally. They've rejected me and rejected my leadership. They're asking for a king. Help me squelch this. Help me quell this. God, what do I say to them? And God responds this way in verse 7 of chapter 8. Listen to this. So Samuel goes to God and he says, God, the people have rejected me. They don't want me to be their ruler. They want a king. They're not happy with the judge. They don't like the current system. They've rejected me. What do I do? And God says, Samuel, Samuel, give them what they want and understand that they're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me from being their king. God says, Samuel, listen, man, I set it up this way on purpose. I directed Joshua to set up the nation exactly as I wanted it to be established. The way that things are currently orchestrated, that you're a judge and that you represent me and that my nation, my people, Israel, is different than the rest of the world in that they don't have a king. That's on purpose, Samuel. And if you think about it, it's not like God didn't know what a monarchy was when he set up his nation. It's not like the idea of kings hadn't occurred to him. It's not like he thought it was a great idea and just thought, nah, I want my people to just be confused for a long time. No, his people didn't need a king because God was the king and the judge was his representative. I mean, the Israelites had the best setup in the history of history. The most altruistic, selfless, powerful, loving, gracious, forgiving being to ever exist was their king. The king of kings was their king. There could be no better ruler than God. And they had him. But they wanted a physical king. They wanted to be able to see and touch him. And so they weren't happy with what they had because they wanted it so badly they couldn't see what God did for them. Israel's desire made them blind to God's provision. Israel's desire, their earnest want for a king made them blind to God's provision for them. Because they had an expectation that led them down this path, that made them expect this thing, they didn't see what was provided for them over here in such a deep and wonderful and profound way. Their own desire made them blind to God's provision. And so God says to Samuel, listen, give them what they want. Give them what they want because they're going to keep clamoring and they haven't rejected you, Samuel. They've rejected me. I've tried to provide for them as their king and they don't see it. So don't take this personally, Samuel. This is an offense to me. And Samuel warns them. Samuel warns them. He goes back to the people. He says, okay, God says that you can have a king. God says that you can have a king, but listen. Listen to what happens if you're going to have a king. I'm reading in verse 10. He says, so Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking from a king, and God's going to let you have one, but you need to understand. You need to understand, listen, this is not going to be a good thing. He's going to take your sons from you and he's going to put them on the front lines and they're going to die for him. He's going to take your daughters out of your home and he's going to take them to his palace and they're going to serve him there. He's going to take a tenth of what you own. He's going to tax you. He's going to enslave you. He's going to impoverish you. And eventually you're going to regret this choice and you're going to cry out to God and he's not going to hear you. Just so you know. It's such a stark warning to these Israelites who are crying out for a king because they want one so badly. You know, it reminds me of something that I've thought for a long time. It's not all the way true, but it's mostly true. You win every argument you get into with God. There's a couple examples where that's not the case. Jonah lost the argument. But for the most part, if you want to argue with God, you win. He tells the people of Israel, you don't need a king, you have me. And they go, but we really want one. And he goes, it's going to be terrible for you. You're going to hate it. And they go, we don't care. We really want one. And God says, okay, if that's what you want. You might remember the story of Jacob who wrestled with God. God comes to him in a vision at night. He wrestles with God all night long. And do you know who won that wrestling match? Jacob did. Is that because God's not powerful enough to defeat Jacob in a wrestling match? No. It's because when we argue with God, we win. God says, hey, I really want you to do this thing. And we go, oh God, no, I don't want to do that thing. But I really, I think it'd be best for you if you did the thing. No, God, please don't make me do the thing. I don't want to do the thing. I'll do anything but the thing. Please don't make me do the thing. And God says, okay, it'd be best for you. It'd be best for your family. You're going to find joy and contentment there, but I'm not going to make you. Or God says, hey, you know, your life would really be better if you didn't do the thing. Your family would be stronger if you'd stop doing the thing. And we go, but God, I really like doing the thing. One day in the future, I'll stop doing the thing. but right now I'm gonna keep doing the thing because I'm finding joy there. And God says, you know what? You can keep doing the thing, but you're only gonna find wreckage there. You're already walking in hurt and damage and leaving a terrible wake, and you're only gonna leave a greater one, and you're only gonna end in more damage and more death, but you keep doing the thing if you want to do the thing. Go ahead. When we argue with God, we get our way. He's going to let us win. But I think what we see out of the story of how Israel got their first king is that sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. Sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. Sometimes getting that thing that we desperately want, that we petition God for, we need it, we're praying for it, we're begging for it, we're asking for it, and we don't, God hasn't given it to us yet, but finally he gives it to us. And that's not the best thing. Sometimes God won't give it to us. So we force it and we find our own way to make things happen. And that's not the best way. Sometimes we argue with God and we say, I don't want to do that thing that you want me to do. And he says, okay, you don't have to do it, but just know you got your way, but that's not the best way. A big warning that I think that echoes through the centuries of how Israel got their first king is that sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. And it turns out to be true. If you'll read through the book of 1 and 2 Kings, what you'll find is that the first king they had was a disaster. He was a selfish jerk and that David, the second king, had to do a military takeover of Jerusalem just to establish his own kingdom. And then it went well for a while, but at the end of his reign, his son Absalom raised up against him and staged a coup d'etat and overthrew him. And David had to siege Jerusalem again, during which he lost his son Absalom. After that, he was able to peacefully hand it over to his son Solomon. Solomon hands it over to Rehoboam, who's such a terrible leader that the northern tribes revolt and follow someone named Jeroboam. And within four kings, within four kings, after they clamored in 1 Samuel 8, we need a king. it's gonna make us good, it's gonna make us better, it's gonna give us security, it's gonna get us respect among the nations. Within four kings, they descend into civil war and the nation splits forever. It exists for the rest of the Old Testament as the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribes of Judah. And within 300 years, each of those separate kingdoms is ushered off into slavery and exile in Babylon and in Assyria. And at the end of the Old Testament, they come limping back a people of slaves in a post, so I'll highlight for you the story of King Hezekiah. You can find this in 2 Kings 20. King Hezekiah was a righteous man. The southern tribes, the northern kingdoms of Israel had no good kings, had no godly kings for any of the 300 years that they existed. The southern kings, the southern kingdom of Judah only had three good kings. One of them was a guy named Hezekiah. Hezekiah was lauded for his faithfulness and his righteousness. When they were surrounded by the Babylonian army, led by a guy named Sennacherib. Sennacherib sends a letter to Hezekiah and he says, listen, get everybody out of the city because I'm going to burn it to the ground. I'm going to take this place over. And if you're stubborn, they're going to die because of you. And Hezekiah takes the letter to the temple. He lays it down before the Lord. He kneels and he lifts it up to God and he says, God, what are we going to do about this? And God says, your faithfulness has saved your people. I will save your people and you will not have to fire an arrow. And sure enough, that's what happens because of Hezekiah's righteousness. After that, Hezekiah gets deathly ill, and he's going to die. And he prays and petitions the Lord for healing. Please, please, God, save me. Please, please, don't let me die. And God in His goodness grants him 15 more years. And towards the end of those 15 years, there's an envoy of Babylonians that come back to Jerusalem. And Hezekiah and his pride can't resist but showing them everything in his kingdom. He shows them all the storehouses, all the wealth, all the things that he's done. It's not enough for Hezekiah to have the applause and the adulation of the nation of Israel for them to think he's great. He wants the Babylonians to think he's great too. In the south, we call that getting too big for your britches. And so after the Babylonians leave, Isaiah the prophet comes to Hezekiah and he says, hey, what did you show them? He says, I showed them everything because of his pride. And Isaiah says, because you did that, you know they're coming back and they're going to take everything that you showed them and they're going to enslave your people. And Hezekiah responds. Look at 2 Kings chapter 20. He responds, as long as there's security in my time, what do I care? Within those extra 15 years that God granted him, Hezekiah lost his way. He lost his character. He went from being humble and righteous and holy to prideful and arrogant and self-centered. And instead of remembering Hezekiah for this wonderful beacon of righteousness and hope that it can be done right, we have to balance his memory with his faltering in the last 15 years. And the story of Hezekiah shows us again that maybe getting our way isn't the best way. It would have been better for him to have gone into eternity when God allowed him to get sick. He regretted asking for those 15 years. And the same is true in our life. We all have things in our life that we petition God for, that we feel like we want so very badly. I can remember when I graduated from college with my freshly minted pastoral ministries degree. I had worked in Young Life. I had been around youth groups. I had had experience. I had done summer camp. And I wanted more than anything to be the youth pastor of a big, fun youth group at a big, fun church where I could do whatever I wanted. I wanted that, and I prayed for it earnestly. And instead, God sent me to Rocky Mount, Virginia, the moonshine capital of the world. Everybody's got to be proud of something. And we met, to say it was an old country church is probably a disservice to old country churches. We met in a colonial farmhouse on a hillside, literally in the middle of nowhere. It was about 35 people a week. There's three middle school boys in my youth group, and none of them cared what I thought about the G gospels. That's what God gave me. A far cry from what I petitioned him for. That was at 25, 24. But at 30, he gave me the thing I had asked him for. I had a big fun youth group at a big fun church. And what I became certain of is, if he'd have given me the petitions of my heart at 24, they would have ruined me and I would have ruined it. And so because God knows better than I do, he said no or not yet to my request when I was 24. We all have things that we petition God for. We all have things that we earnestly want. Maybe we earnestly want a new job, a new opportunity, a new challenge. Maybe we're working through an anxiety and a depression and we just, we've cried out to God, please take this from me. Maybe there's some turmoil in a relationship that matters to us and we've prayed that God would fix it and it just seems to be getting worse and we're not sure what's happening. Maybe we need money. Maybe we just want more money than we have. Maybe we want a bigger house than we have. Maybe we're praying for a move that's not working. Maybe we're praying for an opportunity that we're not getting. Maybe we're being passed up for a promotion that we feel like we deserve. Maybe we're praying for a child that's not coming yet. We're all petitioning God for something. Maybe we're even praying for health or healing for ourselves or for a loved one. We, like the children of Israel, have this thing that we really, really want. This morning, in light of the cautionary tale that comes out of how Israel got their first king. I want us to think about that thing or those things that we really want, that we earnestly need. Some of them might be silly. Some of them are deathly important. But this morning, can we just pause for a second and consider the possibility that God's answer has been no or not yet because yes isn't best for you. Can we just stop and slow down and that thing that you feel like you want so badly that might even seem like a good and righteous prayer. Maybe God hasn't given that thing to you yet. Maybe his answer is no or not yet because yes isn't best for you. Maybe God knows, no, I'm not gonna just drop in and magically heal your relationship because if you don't go through these hard times and do the hard work to find a way to help, then you're not gonna have a foundation for it to not get unhealthy in the future. You need this struggle. No, I'm not going to give you the job yet because you're not ready for it. And if I do, it's going to destroy you. No, I'm not going to give you the money yet because if I do, you're going to be an arrogant jerk and that's going to destroy you too. And you're going to lose your friends. And I don't want that for you. Your greatest happiness is here. I'm providing for you in a way right now that you're not acknowledging that if you would just stop looking at what you're focused on and focus your eyes on God, you would see that he's already met that need for you in your life. Just like the Israelites who were clamoring for a king, yet they had the best one ever. And I know that it's hard to hear. And this one hits close to home for me. But it's possible that even though we earnestly pray for healing, that healing simply isn't what's best. The healing wasn't best for Hezekiah. We so often forget that God sees things from the scope of eternity. And we see this much of it. And even though in this much of it, sometimes it feels like we want something so badly and we can't understand why God wouldn't let us have it, He sees this. And He understands perfectly. And in eternity, you will too. Consider this morning the possibility, just the possibility, that the reason you don't have the thing that you want so very much, that seems like God should want that thing for you, is because having it wouldn't be what's best for you right now. Consider the possibility that God is already providing that in ways that you don't notice. And listen, hear me. I'm not saying that we shouldn't petition God. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go to Him in prayer. I'm not saying that we shouldn't lay out before Him the things that we earnestly want. Jen and I prayed for years that we would have a child. Lily is the answer to that prayer. I don't regret having Lily. It's one of the greatest blessings in my life, if not the single greatest blessing in my life. We should absolutely petition God. The story from Kings is not that we shouldn't go to him with what we want, but maybe it points to a prayer by Jesus himself in the New Testament and encourages us to pray like that. I don't want you to hear this morning that you shouldn't petition God, but I do want you to hear that we should pray like Jesus did, according to the Father's will. When the disciples go to Jesus and they say, how do we pray? He says, when you pray, pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The disciples said, Jesus, how do we pray? And he says, you pray like this. First, you praise God. You acknowledge who he is. Then you say, not my will, your will. What you want, God. Let your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. And to put his money where his mouth was in praying like this, we see Jesus literally pray like this at the end of the Gospels when he's in Gethsemane, the night that he's getting arrested to be crucified. He's laying prostrate on the ground. He is sweating blood. He is maximum stressed out that a human can possibly endure. And he is crying out, God, Father, please take this cup from me. Please don't make me do this. I don't want to do the thing. I don't want to get crucified. I don't want to die like this. Please don't make me do this. But not my will, but your will be done, Father. See the difference? Israel says, God, we want this thing no matter what. God says, it's not going to be good for you. That's not my will. They go, we don't care. This is what we want. We know better than you. Jesus says, God, this is what I want. I want it desperately, badly. But God, I acknowledge that my will might be different than your will, so your will be done, not mine. I think the message coming out of 1 Samuel 8 and the overarching narrative of the results of this desire that's expressed in chapter 8 that we see in 1 and 2 Kings. There's this stark reminder that when we argue with God, He's going to let us have our way, but our way is not the best way. And we should remember that if there is something that we earnestly want, if we've gone to God like the Israelites had and said, hey, we really want this, and God hasn't given it to us yet, it's probably because it's not best for us. And let us remember that when we pray, when we petition God, we should do it like Jesus did. And lay out the things before the Father that you earnestly want, but let's blanket that with, Father, not my will, but your will be done. Let's pray. Lord, you are good, and you are gracious, and you are loving. You are boundlessly patient with us. You were gracious with our frailty and our humanity. I pray that we would see that more and more. God, in light of the sermon, I pray for grace. I don't know how much longer COVID is gonna be a thing. God, I hate that we can't all be together. I know that you hate it more. I know that you're seeing us through this season. And God, even though we earnestly pray that we can all come back together with a feeling of safety and security without anxiety about catching a disease that some of us cannot handle. God, not our will, but your will be done. Let us all return in your perfect timing. God, with the different issues that we're facing with our employment, with the anxiety that we're facing with whether or not our job's going to exist in a couple of months, for those of us who are on the incredibly competitive job market, Father, not our will, but your will be done. Father, may your will be done in the marriages of grace. May your will be done in the raising of the children of grace. May your will be done in the day-to-day lives of the people who call this place home. May your will be done in my life. God, help us pray like that. In Jesus' name, amen.