Worship: Led by Godly Example Kenwood Baptist Church Pastor Palmer October 21, 2018

TEXT: 2 Chronicles 11:1-17

Good morning, beloved. We continue this morning in our fall series which challenges us to worship God. If you're just joining us, we are in the middle of a lesser-known portion of Scripture, 1 & 2 Chronicles, and this morning starts as the second half of our series in many ways. First and Second Chronicles is focused on worship and how the worship of God is at the center of our lives. We have reached the point where the temple is established in the narrative and the people are gathered to praise God. The second half of Chronicles, and the second half of our series, will focus our attention on what happens to us in relation to worshiping God. Is the worship of God an option? Is it something that should occupy a small part of our lives, or is the worship of God the determinative factor in the success or failure of our life? That's what's at stake, and for the writer of 1 & 2 Chronicles, his vision is clear, that if you want to predict someone's success or failure in life, you need to just look at whom they are worshiping. The worship of God is no small matter. It is something of urgent significance for us this morning. Many of us, whether we are believers in Christ or not, live in an increasingly secular environment, and we can’t even help its effect on us. Many of us live a practical atheism, or a functional atheism. We might believe in God, but do we really believe that God is intimately involved in our lives? Some of us may confess faith in Christ, but we wonder if my daily obedience to God really matters. Some of us wonder, is this the pattern of my life? Is this my

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personality? These are my circumstances, is change really possible? Yet the vision of this portion of God's Word draws us to consider that God is very present and involved, that He does care about our obedience, and this narrative will show us that change is possible in the best sense.

I want to start with describing the theological vision of Chronicles, and this vision will hang before us for the rest of our series. It is an invitation to see the world as it really is, and we need this. I need this, because we get a constant stream of information to suggest to us how the world works, and we need God's Word to show us how the world really works. The first element of this theological vision is that God, the living God, is present. With the sanctuary built, God really dwells among His people. He is there. We are called to seek Him. God honors those who honor Him. We are warned in this vision of God's presence, that if we abandon God or turn away from God, the Scriptures say that He abandons us and turns away from us. God is active, attentive, loving. His rule as expressed in a constant, direct, and immediate intervention in their history. It is like having a parent who is there, involved, listening, attentive, responsive, instructing, correcting. The theological vision of Chronicles is first that God is present. Secondly, this vision is that God rewards and honors those who honor Him, and yet, our disobedience leads us away from this circle of blessing into difficulty, hardship, and danger.

As a young parent, I needed help. Our kids are grown up these days it seems, but as a young parent, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I remember when our daughter was an infant, and I thought: “How can I help? What am I supposed to do? In the middle of the night, words of encouragement, a reading? Just what am I supposed to do?” I needed help! As a young parent, I was given the gift of a book by Tedd Tripp called Shepherding a Child's Heart. This helped me so much. It told me what I was supposed do. The first few months, you just communicate love. I thought, “Okay, I have this.” He said to just communicate that you love the child, hold the child, speak to the child, and I thought I could do that. The second task, though, in this in this book is to communicate to your child that they are under authority, they are a person under authority. We are not designed for autonomy. The goal of the Christian life is not independence from God. What a terrible thing, right? I hear many of us use that language. It is terrible! You don’t want your kids to be independent from God, do you? You want your child to be dependent on God, and the first way that they see that is in dependence on you in a right way. This vision was to show children that there is this circle of blessing that you stand in, in right relationship in covenant, and when we obey God, we are we are in His favor.

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This simplistic drawing photocopied from the book really helped me a lot. There is blessing and safety in obeying your parents and obeying God. But when we dishonor our parents, or we dishonor God, we move out from that circle of blessing into danger, into hardship, into difficulty.

The third aspect of the theological vision of Chronicles is unique to the , and that is that change is possible. When we disobey God, we find ourselves in difficulty, and God our Father is correcting us or instructing us that when we turn back—and this is what is so exciting about the Bible—you can actually repent, you can turn back, you can apologize, and God hears that and responds and we are restored into fellowship. The theological vision in this book for parents is very similar to the vision in Chronicles. Do you believe that God is present, I mean really present, and that He knows your thoughts? He knows my aspirations; He knows my speech; he cares about my actions, and He desires me to seek Him with all of my heart, and that is for my good.

The theological vision of Chronicles instructs us powerfully that if we do not seek God, if we do not place worship at the center of our lives, if we get distracted and drawn into lesser things, other things, that God is displeased with that. We need to hear this; I need to hear this, and the glorious news is that when we are in those places—and we have all been in those places where we feel God is far, where He is displeased, or we have gotten distracted from the centrality of God, and we are building our future on something other than God, and we find ourselves in a wasteland, and we say: “Oh, Lord how did I get here and how do I get back?”—the great news of Scripture is that getting back is actually a simple thing. It's turning around, saying: “God, forgive me,” and He hears and responds. This is the heart of ’s prayer in . In , Solomon said: “If they sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin. We sin, and we find ourselves separated, caught off, and the glorious good news, the gospel, if you will, of 2 Chronicles 7:14 is: “If My people who are called by My name humble themselves, and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Seek My face: that is crucial language in Chronicles, and turn: that's the language of repentance, then God hears and He forgives and He heals. This is the gospel of 1 & 2 Chronicles.

Is it possible that the lives and the service and the experience of being in covenant with the living God, the experience of ancient Israel, the experience of ancient Israelite kings, is actually

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instructive for you and me today, this morning? Is it really? The Apostle Paul seems to think so. In 1 Corinthians 10:11, he says, referring to the narratives, several of which he has just cited: “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” The Greek term he uses for example is typikos, in other words as typical, exemplary, as paradigmatic, instructive narratives for us. In Corinthians, he is writing to a mixed congregation of new Christians from all over the world, and he says explicitly that the Old Testament narrative is instructive for us. Do you believe that? I need you believe that because we are going to talk about the narrative of , and if you don't believe that the narrative of Scripture is profoundly instructive to us, you will be asking the whole rest of the sermon: “How does this apply to me?” Well, it has everything to do with you and me, because the God that we see at work illustrating this theological vision in real lives is the same God that we worship and are serving this morning.

Let’s look at the first example. The rest of our series in Chronicles will be looking at the lives of kings and leaders to see if this theological vision really plays out in their lives, and if so, if it does for them, then it does for us as well. So, let's jump in to the life experience of Rehoboam, who is the son of King Solomon. Rehoboam’s life, experience, his reign of 17 years, is described in three chapters in the Scriptures, in 2 Chronicles—17 years in three chapters. It's a selective presentation, but it is selective to instruct us. We just heard the beginning of 2 Chronicles 11, which is the middle section, so let's catch up briefly with what happens right before that. After Solomon completes the temple, the glory of God dwells in the midst of His people and is enthroned among them, and worship happens at the center of the community. This is the initial climax, a high point, and you think: “Where do we go from there?” Where we go from there is a civil war, unfortunately. There is a civil war between Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, and , who is one of Solomon's leading servants in the building projects in which he was engaged. Jeroboam leads a rebellion, and he takes ten of the tribes of Israel with him to the north. These ten tribes end up being referred to as Israel; the southern kingdom is referred to as Judah. It's a devastating event, and the country is split in half. Civil wars are always the worst kind of war. This civil war takes place in , and the kingdom is ripped apart in just the next generation. Now we pick up in 2 Chronicles 11 with what happened.

Rehoboam, upon discovering this rendering of his kingdom, comes to . He assembles the house and he gathers together 180,000 chosen warriors, and they are going to fight to restore the kingdom. They are going to bring unity back by force. He is gathering an army and making preparations for war, and then in 2 Chronicles 11:2, we read:

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“But the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah the man of God.” If you could have one phrase to describe someone, wouldn't that be a great phrase? We need men of God in our lives. Shemaiah appears with a word from God, and in 2 Chronicles 11:4, the word from God is: “Thus says the LORD, You shall not go up or fight against your relatives. Return every man to his home, for this thing is from Me.” The civil war, the rendering of the kingdom, turns out to be God's sovereign hand, and Shemaiah speaks this word because we serve a God who speaks and is living. You might think: “What does the word of Shemaiah have to do with me in my life?” It has everything to do with us, because it means that we serve a God who is involved. It means we are about to go to do something—for example, should I take this new job?—and the God of the Bible can speak to you and say: “No, go back home and be faithful with where I have placed you.” It means that the God of the Bible will speak, and often He speaks through other people. The remarkable thing is that the king, who just lost 80% of his kingdom, listened. Isn’t it great when we listen to God? I love that. I love that in a child; I love that in an adult; I love that when I see that in your lives, when God speaks and you say: “Okay, I’ll do it even though I don't know exactly where that leads.”

Listening to God leads to good places. It doesn't mean you have to understand everything, but God speaks. He says: “Go back home.” Rehoboam says, “Okay. I don’t totally understand why. I just lost 80% of my kingdom, but You said it, so I'm going home.” So he went home, and then he went to work with what God had given him, and we see in the narrative great blessing upon Rehoboam. He builds 15 cities. What would you do with your discretionary time when God says not to do something but just stay here? You get to work, and that’s what he does. In the theological vision of Chronicles, building things is always a sign of blessing, and Rehoboam builds 15 cities, and they are defense cities. There is a blessing of abundant provision. He stocks these cities with food, oil and wine, shields and spears, and they are strong to defend the southern half of his kingdom against the Egyptian invasion. He has the blessing of great building, the blessing of abundant provisions, and then he has the blessing of attracting to himself godly leaders. We read in 2 Chronicles 10:13: “And the priests and the Levites who were in all Israel presented themselves to him from all places where they lived.” All of a sudden, the priests and the Levites in Israel showed up. The text says they presented themselves: “Here we are.” This is like an answer to one of your pastor's regular prayers. I pray this all the time for our church. I say: “Lord, would You send people here to accomplish what You want to accomplish?” I invite you to pray that. If you are in ministry, leading an area, just

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pray that: “Lord, would You send people here to accomplish what You want to accomplish here?” You can pray that not just in church, but you can pray that in your work setting, your school, or wherever. Rehoboam must have prayed something like that, because, all of a sudden, all these Levites showed up. They came, and they left their common lands and holdings and came to Judah and Jerusalem. We find out they came because Jeroboam had kicked them all out. I had a pastor friend who was serving a Congregational Church in an area of our country that had grown very liberal theologically, and he was kicked out, fired, from his position. When he asked the elders he was being fired, one of the elders said: “You talk too much about Jesus.” Can you imagine? He said: “Okay, I'm sorry. I'm leaving. If that's the reason, then I'm not a good fit here, because I'm here to make much of Jesus.”

These Levites show up. They’ve been kicked out because Jeroboam had led the northern kingdom into idolatry, set up golden calves and goat idols. I don’t even want to know what those are. They left, and they showed up, and then we see this fourth blessing in 2 Chronicles 11:16. Not only do the Levites show up, but that godly leadership radiated out, and we read in 2 Chronicles 11:16: “And those who had set their hearts to seek the LORD God of Israel came after them from all the tribes of Israel to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the LORD, the God of their fathers.” There is that key language. Are you a person this morning who has set your heart to seek God? Chronicles is inviting us to see that the worship of God is the center of our lives, that success and failure is determined by our resolve to seek God with all of our heart. Remember, Jesus’ summary of the greatest commandment: What does God require of us in covenant? It is to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Seek God, and the people who were seeking God came up and they sacrificed to the Lord. The kingdom grew strong and obedience among the people was extended and grew and the people walked in the way of the Lord for three years. So obedience took a dramatic rise.

The last blessing in 2 Chronicles 11 is a proliferation of descendants, a clear dynastic succession. So, everything looks great, doesn't it? Fifteen cities. That’s a lot of cities, all of them filled with foodstuff, supplies, weapons. The bank account is full; the people are walking with God. Everyone who is seeking God is pouring into the church, and would that the narrative ended here. But it doesn't, because God's Word is a presentation of reality, and we need , all of it. We look at 2 Chronicles 12:1: “When the rule of Rehoboam was established and he was strong, he abandoned the law of the LORD, and all Israel with him.” That verse is a crusher. Sometimes we think that when it's hard and things are not going well

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that we put up a wall between us and God. But it is more often the case, isn't it, when we look honestly, it's more often the case when everything is going well—when I just got the promotion; when my son or daughter got accepted to the school they were dreaming about; the defenses are secure; all the Christmas presents are purchased. Life is good, and we are tempted in that moment with this crazy thought that I can take it from here. It was when he was strong that he thought he didn't need the Lord. When his rule was established, at that moment he turned away. That is strong language. He abandoned the law of the Lord, and the people followed. That's why leadership is always held to higher standards of accountability. What happens next? When a child flagrantly disobeys their father, what do you do? Nothing? A loving parent doesn't remain silent. God acts, not out of malice, but out of love. The Scriptures say that God disciplines those whom He loves and that parents who withhold discipline or correction from their children actually hate them. When you see someone veering off the rails and you say nothing; if you saw someone driving and they were coming into danger and you did nothing, that would not be an act of love.

When I cross the Ohio River to go to the airport, I always have this moment when I think this is such a powerful illustration of why you have to trust God. It is not because the bridge is old, although it is old, right? You review the protocol of what happens if this bridge goes down and I'm in the water, right? I hope that never happens, but as you go to the airport and you are crossing the bridge, there's this moment when you have to take God's Word as his Word, because reality, for a moment, looks different. As you come through downtown Cincinnati, all the signage says that if you want to go south, then you have to turn north. Right? You come up to that and you think, I want to go that way and all the sign says that if you want to go south, then get in the right lane. You’re thinking you don’t want to go north and you see this curve happening, and that’s all you can see, the buildings and the tunnel. The lights are on, and you come through, and you think: “Okay, God, I'm taking You at Your Word. I want to go south, but I'm trusting what's written.” So there you go, underneath that overpass, thinking you’re going the wrong way, and all the sudden, the vista clears and the road turns dramatically in a way that you could not see. You cannot see that when you're downtown. So, if you want to live your life by intuition, you are going to go the wrong direction. From my last trip from the airport, coming back and going underneath the bridge, that's always a little extra hazardous as there seem to be so many more lanes going north, and then, again, you have to get in the right lane, battle traffic, and again you have these thoughts that this bridges old; it needs to be painted at the minimum, and you are coming up there and you know you have got to get over, and you wonder who’s going to let me get over, and there are semis. Last time I was going through, someone is coming facing me, and they kept flashing their lights. I thought: “Why are they doing that? Why are they flashing their lights?” Then I saw that there was a broken down car stopped right on the lane in the middle that bridge. That flashing light had alerted me that

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there was danger ahead, so I was on the alert. I slowed down, and I moved around that. I thought that if you see danger coming, and you say nothing, the Bible says that's not an act of love.

So, at the abandonment of God's Word, God acts, and He acts in 2 Chronicles 12:2: “In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, because they had been unfaithful to the LORD, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem.” God used a pagan king. The Hebrew Shishak is the Egyptian Shoshenq I. He is one of two named pharaohs in the Bible. He is the founder of the 22nd Dynasty, of Libyan ancestry. He ruled from the city of Bubastis in the eastern Nile Delta. He came up to Jerusalem, and he didn’t come by himself. He brought 1200 chariots and 60,000 horsemen and people without number. They came, and he took the fortified cities, and the blessing of that safety and security was lost. What's going on? Doesn’t God see and care about my obedience? He does. Then Shemaiah, the man of God shows up again. He comes to Rehoboam and the princes of Judah who had gathered at Jerusalem. They were panicked. The Egyptian army had come up, taking the southern cities, and they were headed towards Jerusalem. The man of God comes and says in 1 Chronicles 12:5: “Thus says the LORD, 'You abandoned Me, so I have abandoned you to the hand of Shishak.’” I never want to hear that. I don't want to you to hear that, but we need this portion of God's Word, because if we remove God and the worship of God from the living center of our lives, we are going to end up in danger. This is real, and they are in danger. Again, God, the living God, speaks and sends godly leaders into our lives who interpret what's going on.

But this isn’t the end. It's a remarkable event. It's my moment of exegetical euphoria this week. This is so good. You won't believe it. What happens next is possible only in covenant relationship with the living God. Most people in that situation today will be tempted to blame God or to accuse God, or to rationalize their circumstances, but when the Word of the Lord comes in this moment, the princes and the king humble themselves: “Oh, God, I somehow got duped into building my life without You at the center.” When the circumstances changed from blessing to God's discipline and correction, their hearts were tender and soft, and we read in 2 Chronicles 12:6: “Then the princes of Israel and the king humbled themselves and said, ‘The LORD is righteous.’” “The Lord is in the right and I am in the wrong.” That is something that happens only by the power of the Holy Spirit. No one says this. No one says: “I'm wrong. I’m sorry. Lord, You're right,” but they do. And the Lord responds and says in 2 Chronicles 12:7:

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“They have humbled themselves. I will not destroy them, but I will grant them some deliverance, and My wrath shall not be poured out on Jerusalem by the hand of Shishak.” So God stays this army that's streaming towards them, and yet in His love and correction, the Lord says in 2 Chronicles 12:8: “Nevertheless, they shall be servants to him, that they may know My service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” They will serve Shishak for a season, for God's corrective purpose, that they would know the difference between serving Me and serving him. We need this. I need this. Sometimes we take for granted the joy and blessing of serving God, and we discover the attraction or temptations of this world, and all the sudden we find ourselves over there, and we find that this world is a task master and God's loving, corrective hand says He will not destroy the city. He will protect it. And the Lord says: “I want you to know the difference between serving Me and serving Pharaoh.” That is something we should have known. Our fathers could have told us.

Let me help us see just briefly the difference between serving the Lord and serving Shishak. The largest Egyptian temple complex in antiquity is the temple complex at Karnak. It’s a huge area. This is the entranceway today. You come through 50 pairs of rams-headed sphinxes on your way in. The scale of this is almost impossible to conceive. You can see people in the distance are very, very small.

This is the main gate. There's an image of this main gate reconstructed. There are gigantic, colossal statues of Pharaoh on either side coming into the inner courts. Shoshenq built the courtyard on the inside of this first monumental gate. He explained that his intention was to make a festival court to honor his father Amun-Ra.

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He built a gateway on the side known as the Bubastite gate, and on this gate, you can see the outline in the center of the large, feathered headdress of Amun.

In a painted reconstruction, you see the figure of the god with the scimitar in his hand, and you see Pharaoh with the crown of upper and lower Egypt with a mace in his hand. This is the traditional iconography of the smiting Pharaoh, grabbing the heads of his enemies and ready to cudgel them to death. This is what it looks like to serve Shishak.

We come in closer to the image of the king and of the god, and we see all of these rings, inscriptions. You come in even closer, and you see these oval- shaped designs. The French conquerors of Egypt under Napoleon thought these looked like gun casings and that's why they call them cartouche, which in French is a gun casing. But that oval around the set of hieroglyphs, after hieroglyphs were deciphered, scholars realized that that oval marks a proper name.

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Whenever you have a cartouche, inside the cartouche is a proper name, and when this monumental wall was deciphered and translated, we realized that these cartouches actually marked 187 names. As the names were translated we realized that these names were lists of cities that were taken, and these cities were listed as those taken by Pharaoh on his conquering raids to the north. City number 19, Adullam, one of Rehoboam’s cities. City number 26, Aijalon, one of his cities. City number 34, Gath. City number 38, Socoh. The depictions of the people above the name are designed to look like the people who lived there, and when these cartouches were translated, we realize that what we are looking at are our ancestors. What we are looking at is what happens when we take God out of the center. We go back to the place where God had rescued us. We serve lords who seek only to steal, kill, and destroy. And with the plunder that Shishak takes from the temple, he builds a foreign god.

Brothers and sisters, we need God's correction in our lives to move us back into blessing. The good news of 2 Chronicles 12 is in verse 12: “And when he humbled himself the wrath of the LORD turned from him, so as not to make a complete destruction. Moreover, conditions were good in Judah.” We serve a God this morning who is present and active, who desires our worship, not because He needs it, but because we need it. We need to give our greatest love, our greatest affection, to our heavenly Father. The worship of God cannot be a small part of our lives. It has got to be the center, and 2 Chronicles 10, 11, 12, as obscure as it might seem at first glance, is actually teaching us that success and failure in our lives is determined by having God in the center. When we have God at the center, blessings flow. Sometimes those blessings are evident and things are going well. Sometimes the blessings are evident in strength to endure difficulty. Having God at the center also means that God is present, so that when we step away, when we turn away, when we are tempted to think for a moment that we can do this on our own, we

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serve a God who honors the prayer of repentance, who honors the humbling, who honors the one who says: “Lord, I wanted this, but You told me to do this.”

This theological vision is powerfully instructive, and it calls us to faithfulness, with God at the center. It opens up before us the possibility of turning, and I want to invite you this morning, if you're in a spot, in a place, where you feel distant or separate from your heavenly Father, I want to invite you to turn towards Him. He honors that. If you're in a place where you don't understand what's happening in your life, ask Him to send one to help interpret that for you. God calls us in His Word to be people like that, to interpret, to give the Word of the Lord, and to be people who build their lives with God at the center. This is the summons of our Lord Jesus at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, isn’t it? “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice builds his house on a rock. The storms come, but the house stands.” Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank You for Your Word. Lord, I need Your Word, and Lord, I suspect that all of us do. Lord, we need Your Word to remind us, even in this narrative of an Israelite King, that You desire and You require a people to seek You. So, Lord, we want to seek You with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Lord, we desire Your blessing in all the forms that it comes. Lord, we know that You love us enough to correct us, and so, Lord, if you have corrected us, if You if you have been speaking in a way that's reminding us of what the hegemony of this world looks like and feels like, we pray that You would work in our hearts to humble us and draw us back to You. Lord, Your Word teaches us, every chapter, of your desire for us. Lord, we need You. We cannot do this on own. Would You come, Lord, and hear our prayers as we turn our hearts to You.

Amen.

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