Transcript
All right, let’s read 1 Kings, starting in chapter 13, verse 33.
After this event Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way, but again he made priests from every class of people for the high places. Whoever wished, he consecrated him, and he became one of the priests of the high places. And this thing was the sin of the house of Jeroboam, so as to exterminate and destroy it from the face of the earth.
At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam became sick. And Jeroboam said to his wife, Please arise, and disguise yourself, that they may not recognize you as the wife of Jeroboam, and go to Shiloh. Indeed, Ahijah the prophet is there, who told me that I would be king over this people.
Also take with you ten loaves, some cakes, and a jar of honey, and go to him. He will tell you what will become of the child.
So Jeroboam’s wife did so. She arose and went to Shiloh, and came to the house of Ahijah. But Ahijah could not see, for his eyes were glazed by reason of his age.
Now the Lord had said to Ahijah, Here is the wife of Jeroboam, coming to ask you something about her son, for he is sick. Thus and thus you shall say to her. For it will be, when she comes in, that she will pretend to be another woman.
And so it was, when Ahijah heard the sound of her footsteps as she came through the door, he said, Come in, wife of Jeroboam. Why do you pretend to be another person? For I have been sent to you with bad news.
Go, tell Jeroboam, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Because I exalted you from among the people, and made you ruler over My people Israel, and tore the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it to you, yet you have not been as My servant David, who kept My commandments and who followed Me with all his heart, to do only what was right in My eyes, but you have done more evil than all who were before you, for you have gone and made for yourself other gods and molded images to provoke Me to anger, and have cast Me behind your back.
Therefore behold, I will bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every male in Israel, bond and free. And I will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as one takes away refuse until it is all gone. The dogs shall eat whoever belongs to Jeroboam and dies in the city, and the birds of the air shall eat whoever dies in the field. For the Lord has spoken it.
Arise therefore, go to your house. When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he is the only one of Jeroboam who shall come to the grave, because in him there has found something good toward the Lord God of Israel in the house of Jeroboam.
Moreover the Lord will raise up for Himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam. This is the day. What? Even now. For the Lord will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water. He will uproot Israel from this good land which He gave to their fathers, and will scatter them beyond the River, because they have made their wooden images, provoking the Lord to anger. And He will give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who sinned and who made Israel sin.
Then Jeroboam’s wife arose and departed, and came to Tirzah. When she came to the threshold of the house, the child died. And they buried him, and all Israel mourned for him, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through His servant Ahijah the prophet.
Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he made war and how he reigned, indeed they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel. The period that Jeroboam reigned was twenty-two years. So he rested with his fathers, and Nadab his son reigned in his place.
In the past week the media has focused our attention again and again on the tragedy that took place at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. And over and over again we have been invited to wrestle with questions like, How could this have happened? Why did it happen? Could it have been prevented? And what does a tragedy like this tell us about our own society and culture?
I suspect that if it had been a case of adults killing adults, the story would have played for a while, but it would have died out much more quickly than it has. But when the killers are children and most of the victims are children, then this is something that definitely captures the attention and the focus of the American public.
With all of the faults that our culture and society have, there is one concern that does seem to run generally through the society, and that is a concern for the well-being of our children. And so it’s not at all surprising that Americans have focused upon this tremendously tragic incident that affected children.
And if you understand that fact, I think we will be able to appreciate more accurately the story that we just read a few moments ago from the book of 1 Kings. Here’s a man, Jeroboam by name, who has risen from the role of a laborer in one of Solomon’s workforces through to the position of the king of the ten tribes of the northern kingdom.
And if I tell you that Jeroboam was a stubborn and hard-headed man, I think I would be hitting the target right in the bull’s-eye. Despite the fact that a man of God from Judah had confronted him and pronounced God’s judgment against the false religion that Jeroboam had created in Israel, despite the fact, remember, that when Jeroboam had stretched out his hand to give the order to arrest this prophet, his hand had been paralyzed.
He couldn’t pull his arm back to himself, and he had to plead with the prophet to pray to God that his arm may be restored as it was before. Despite the fact that while he was standing there, the altar at which he was burning incense miraculously split in the middle, and the ashes from the altar were poured on the ground.
Despite what is obviously a confrontation with the word of God, with the power of God, the writer of the book of Kings tells us that after this event Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way. In fact, apparently he got worse. Completely ignoring God’s established priestly order, he creates a priestly order of his own.
And anybody who wants to be a priest can be a priest for Jeroboam, and he consecrates them to the office of priesthood. Obviously we are dealing with a man who has stubbornly resisted the word of God. And that is why we now read that his son Abijah, apparently still a young child, is suddenly stricken with a disease so serious that his father fears for his life.
And now, apparently for the first time in probably a very long time, he becomes conscious of his need in some way to turn to God. And he thinks of the prophet Ahijah who had proclaimed the word of God to him and had announced to Jeroboam that he would someday be king over Israel. And now he wants to turn back to that prophet, and he wants that prophet to tell him what will happen to this son who is so seriously ill.
What this tells us is that God knows how to get the attention of even the most stubborn and hard-hearted of men and women. May I suggest to you that sometimes when we have refused to face the problems and sins in our own lives, sometimes when we may have heard sermons that hit those sins directly, and you know we were moved by that, but after a while we forgot about them and we went back to our own old lifestyle and our own pattern, sometimes it is necessary for God to try to capture and catch our attention by allowing something to happen to our children.
That’s precisely what He did in the case of Jeroboam. Now I don’t need to tell you, do I, that the real test of the quality of our Christian life is not how we behave when we come to church meetings like this. We have a lot of nice people here at Victor Street, and I don’t know of anybody at Victor Street who misbehaves at our church meetings.
In fact, people come into our church and tell us that we’re a warm and friendly church, and I really believe that we are. But the test of our Christian life is not what we’re like on Sunday morning at the meetings of the church, is it? The test of the quality of our Christian life is what we’re like at home for seven days out of the week.
The test is how we talk and how we act at home, how we relate to our spouse and how we relate to our children, whether or not in the course of the week God is at the center of our lives or He’s on the sidelines of our life or maybe just way off in a corner in the periphery of our experience.
And I probably don’t need to tell you that whatever sins are manifested in our home life, in our home experience, we have a captive audience for that if we’re parents. And our captive audience is the children that God has given to us and permitted to grow up in our home. And sometimes, sometimes it becomes necessary for God to try to get our attention, perhaps when He’s tried in many other ways to do it and we haven’t responded.
Sometimes it becomes necessary for God to get our attention by allowing something to happen to one of our children or several of our children so that we will be awakened to our sense of a need for Him. So God got Jeroboam’s attention this way, didn’t He, by allowing his son Abijah to fall seriously sick.
Now I wish that I could tell you that as soon as Abijah fell seriously sick, that Jeroboam fell down on his knees and poured out a prayer of confession and repentance to God. I wish I could tell you that he did that, but that’s not what he did. I even wish I could tell you that he sent a message to Ahijah that in his message to Ahijah he said, I know that I have sinned against the Lord.
Will you please tell me how to straighten this out and how to receive mercy for my sick child? But he didn’t even do that. In fact, what Jeroboam does is stunning. It’s even shocking. He calls his wife and he says to his wife, You go to Ahijah the Shilonite. He’s the prophet that told me I would someday be the king.
You go to Ahijah in Shiloh, and you pretend to be somebody else. And take along some goodies for the prophet, you know, take some thin loaves of bread, take some cakes with some honey, and ask him what will happen to this child. You realize what this man is doing? He’s seeking the word of God from Ahijah the prophet, but he’s deceiving the prophet and bribing him at the same time.
Can you believe it? Well, yes we can. What’s going on in this man’s mind? Well, first of all, you remember that when Ahijah the prophet had announced to him that he would someday be the king of Israel, Ahijah had said to him, If you will walk in God’s ways and keep His statutes and judgments, just as David did when he was king, then I will establish your kingdom over Israel.
And Jeroboam knows perfectly well, because remember the prophet from Judah had confronted him, he knows perfectly well that he hasn’t done what Ahijah told him to do by the word of the Lord. So he figures, if I send my wife and she says I’m the wife of Jeroboam and what’s going to happen to Jeroboam’s child, the news will not be good.
So what does he think? He thinks, if I can send my wife and Ahijah doesn’t figure out that she’s my wife, and she gives him these good things that I have sent, maybe he’ll say something good. Maybe he’ll even pronounce the wonderful magical words, Your son will get well. Well, you say that’s dumb.
I mean, how does he think he can pull this off? I would never act that way. Or would I? How about this? Suppose I’m a parent and something bad happens to one of my children. And in the depths of my heart I say, You know, I haven’t been doing too well in my own relationship to God, and I’m not sure whether God would hear my prayers on this or not.
So I’m going to go through a really spiritual Christian. I’m going to go to somebody who’s got an in with God. And I’m going to go to my pastor. I’m not going to tell him what I’m doing wrong. I’m going to just tell him the problem with my child. And maybe, you know, maybe their prayers will do the trick and my child will be healed.
It’s kind of like treating either the word of God or prayer as if it was a kind of a magical formula, you know what I mean? If you turn on the right switch, you get the electric power flowing. If you don’t think this happens, let me tell you a story that actually did happen years ago when we were meeting at the storefront building on Hickory and North Linn Street.
There was a woman whose name I will not give you because some of you would recognize the name of this woman if I gave it to you. She had a sick relative, and she was obviously worried about the sick relative. So she called the Catholic priest to come in and pray for the relative. And then she called the Protestant preacher to come in and pray for the relative.
Now you know she’s covering all the bases. There’s the Catholic prayers. Why, you know, she’s not that confident in case God of this is the Protestant prayer. She’s got that covered. Or maybe if you have both a Catholic and a Protestant prayer, you got a double whammy and maybe God will just be unable to resist responding.
Treating God and treating those who pray to God as if we’re working with some kind of magical formula. If we just do it right, you know, get the right approach, everything will be all right. Now I’m really proud of this church that we have a parents prayer meeting once a month.
And I’m very proud of the fact that many of the parents come to this prayer meeting very faithfully. I sometimes wonder where some of them are. It seems like maybe they’re back home watching TV while other people pray for their kids. But we do have good support for the prayer meeting.
But I hope that our parents who come to the parents prayer meeting don’t come with the idea, if we just get enough people praying for my kids, that’ll do it. Well, maybe God won’t listen to me, but if you know the good people that are there at the prayer meeting, if they will join with me in this, maybe I can get the answer to my prayer.
I hope, I hope that every parent who comes to the parents prayer meeting has at some point in time asked themselves this question: Is it possible that one of the reasons I have concerns and problems with my children is because God has concerns and problems with me? Is it possible that I am having some of these difficulties in my household because I haven’t been listening to what God wants me to listen to?
I haven’t been doing what God wants me to do? When we come before God in a prayer meeting like this, that’s come as ourselves. And I don’t have charge of this prayer meeting. Joe leads it. He leads it very effectively. And this is a suggestion that Joe is free to ignore.
But if I was leading the prayer meeting, you know what I might be tempted to do at one of those prayer meetings? We wouldn’t pray for any of the children at all. The parents would pray for themselves. The other parent, because it may be that before God can listen to the prayers that we are praying for our children, He needs to do some things in us.
And that’s one of the things we need to face. That’s one of the things we need to ask ourselves. And don’t you see, Jeroboam is not going to face that. Dizzy as he is, he’s not even going to tell Ahijah the prophet who he is asking this question. And he hopes he’ll luck through, and Ahijah will say something nice, and his son will get well.
But Jeroboam is in for a big surprise, don’t you agree? After all, Jeroboam left something out of the equation. He left the fact that he’s dealing with the living God. Yeah, it was an ideal setting for a deception because Ahijah was now an old man and his eyes were set. He was legally blind.
If he had ever been able to recognize the wife of Jeroboam, he couldn’t recognize her anymore. And so it was seemingly a good situation in which to pull off this deception. Unfortunately for Jeroboam and his wife’s little plot, before she even comes to his house, God communicates with the prophet and informs him that Jeroboam’s wife is on her way to ask about her sick son, and that she’s going to pretend to be somebody else.
And that therefore he should say thus and thus to Jeroboam’s wife. Can you imagine her surprise? I mean, she’s probably got to be shocked here as she walks through the door, and this blind prophet says to her, Come in, wife of Jeroboam. Why are you pretending to be somebody else? I am sent to you with bad news.
Talk about being caught in a lie before you even tell the guy. She’s dealing with a blind prophet, but with a God who sees everything, a God who knows everything. Let’s remember when we come to God for any favor that we’re coming to a God who knows all about us. It doesn’t do us any good to try to hide. God sees into this.
So now Ahijah says, I want you to go and tell Jeroboam, Thus says the Lord. He doesn’t say I’ve got some good news and some bad news. There isn’t any good news for Jeroboam. It’s all bad. And he said, I want you to go and tell Jeroboam that I raised you up from among the people, and I made you king over Israel, and I tore the kingdom from the hands of the house of David.
And David was a man who obeyed me and did my commandments, and you’ve been worse than anybody before you. You’ve made other gods for yourselves. You’ve made graven images. And because of that I’m going to bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. And it, talk about getting worse news than you ever imagined.
He says every single male in the house of Jeroboam will die. Not only the people that are born into the house of Jeroboam, mind you, but the slaves also will die. And furthermore they won’t get buried. So that those who belong to Jeroboam who died in the city will be eaten by the dogs, and those who belong to Jeroboam who die in the field will be eaten by the birds.
For the Lord has spoken it. I mean, that’s really, really grim news. And it’s a reminder of a very simple lesson, my friends, that when we play the stubborn game with God, we never win. We don’t have any cards in our hand. We may as well fold that game right away.
All right, Jeroboam was stubborn. He wasn’t going to own up to his sins. He was going to try to trick the prophet into pronouncing the recovery of his son, and it doesn’t work. Not for a single moment. And the news he gets back is worse than he could have imagined. Every single male there’s going to die.
And what about the boy? Well, Ahijah says to the wife of Jeroboam, When you go back to the city, when you enter the city, your son will die. Now right here we stop and we say, Wait a minute. Is God being unfair here? I mean, is He going to take out His anger against Jeroboam and against Jeroboam’s wife, who were both involved in this deception?
Is He going to take out His anger on them by taking away the life of this little boy? Is this a vindictive and cruel act for God to do? And the answer, of course, is absolutely not. And you’ll notice that what Ahijah says to the wife of Jeroboam is that he is the only male in the house of Jeroboam who will come to the grave, who will actually be buried in a decent way.
And the reason, God says, is because something good is found in him toward the Lord God of Israel. And here is the amazing fact, my friends, that God’s taking of the life of this little boy was, from the standpoint of the little boy, a tremendous mercy.
God is not going to allow this little boy to grow up and see the disaster that is coming upon the sinful house of Jeroboam. He’s not going to allow this little boy to be eaten by the dogs as the rest of the men who died in the city would be eaten from the house of Jeroboam. He’s not going to allow this little boy to be preyed on by the birds of the field.
He’s going to see that this little boy comes to the grave in peace, and he is appropriately mourned. If I were guessing, I would say that the statement of our text suggests that the little boy was, well, say that he had a real faith in the God of Israel. And God steps in and deals with the little boy in mercy.
Now listen closely. This is one of the most important things I want to say this afternoon. Even if God has tried to get your attention by things that have happened to your children, God is not going to punish you through your children by being vindictive to your children. Everything that God has done in the lives of your children is designed for the good of your children.
One of the things we learn from the New Testament is God’s love for little children. You remember the words of Jesus, Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God. But sometimes, my friends, our own children need the trouble because they need to learn the lessons that God has been unable to teach us.
Sometimes God may even take a child out of this world to spare them the horrible things that may lie ahead within the household, within their own life experience. And we have to know that even though God is seeking to get our attention through our children, oftentimes that He’s not being cruel and unkind.
In loving and merciful ways through our kids, He is always dealing with them in His infinite love and mercy and compassion. So what happens? Jeroboam’s wife goes back. She enters the city. As she crosses the threshold of her own house, her child dies. Did you notice two thresholds here?
As she stepped across the threshold of Ahijah’s house, the mask of her deception is ripped away from her. As she steps back across the threshold of her own house, her son is ripped away from her. And the disaster that was coming on the house of Jeroboam was only the beginning for Israel.
And eventually according to the word of Ahijah the prophet his rule would be uprooted from the land and into captivity. But the little boy is not now to see any of this disaster. We’re told that he’s buried, he’s mourned appropriately, and God mercifully allowed his life to go into His own presence to avoid the disasters that are coming upon his sinful family.
Tragedy took a good many families who had children in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. And all the world can do is kind of wring their hands and say, How do you explain this? No answer from there. I want to suggest to you that if we knew everything about these children that God knows, if we knew what their future life would be like as God knew what their future life would be by God, I suspect I’m convinced that we would agree that every single death that occurred at Columbine in Colorado was an act of mercy on God’s part in terms of the children.
And furthermore it may be that out of this tragedy some of the parents will be moved to turn themselves back to God and to have dealings with God that they put off for a long, long time. What’s the bottom line of my talk to you today? The bottom line is this.
Don’t force God to try to get your attention through things that happen to your children. Be the kind of person who’s not stubborn with God, who’s open to God, who’s responsive to God, who’s willing to examine themselves as well as the lives of their children. If you’re a parent, maybe the kind of prayer you want to pray is the kind of prayer that was prayed by the psalmist.
The words are familiar to all of us: Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.