Well, it's been a delight to
be here. Nothing better for preachers
than to hear preaching. We have to listen to our own
voice all the time. We get tired of that pretty quick. Thank you for the invitation
and your kindness and generosity. Your friendship over these years,
Lord, has truly blessed me to have our paths to cross. If you
have your Bibles, please turn with me to 1 Kings, Chapter 11.
1 Kings, Chapter 11. Begin reading
with verse 14. We will read through verse 25
of 1 Kings 11. And the Lord stirred up an adversary
unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite. He was of the king's seed in
Edom. For it came to pass when David
was in Edom, and Joab the captain of the host was gone up to bury
the slain, after he had smitten every male in Edom. Six months
did Joab remain there with all Israel until he had cut off every
male in Edom. that Hadad fled, he and certain
Edomites of his father's servants with him, to go into Egypt, Hadad
being yet a little child. They rose out of Midian and came
to Paran, and they took men with them out of Paran, and they came
to Egypt, and Pharaoh king of Egypt, which gave him a house
and appointed him victuals, and gave him land. And Hades had
found great favor in the sight of Pharaoh, so that he gave him
to wife, the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tophanes,
the queen. The sister of Tophanes bore him
Genuboth, his son. And Tophenes weaned in Pharaoh's
house, and Genuboth was in Pharaoh's household among the sons of Pharaoh.
When Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers,
and Joab the captain of the host was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh,
Let me depart, that I may go to my own country. And Pharaoh
said unto him, What hast thou lacked with me? And, behold,
thou seekest to go to thine own country. And he answered, Nothing,
albeit let me go in any wise. And God stirred him up another
adversary, Rezon. the son of Elida, which fled
from the Lord Hadadezer, king of Zoboth. And he gathered him
men, and became captain over a band, when David slew them
in Zobah. And they went to Damascus, and
dwelt therein, and reigned in Damascus. And he was an adversary
to Israel all the days of Solomon, beside the mischief that Hadad
did. And he abhorred Israel. and reigned over Syria. This story, this account, this
record that we have here is of the last days of Solomon, the
end of his career to some degree. When you say the name Solomon, Almost everybody would say that
he was a great king and a great man. Even those who don't know
God have a view and a good view of Solomon. It was Solomon, however,
who looked at his whole life and said that it was just vanity. That's all it was. Man in his
best state is altogether vanity. As to perspective, our Lord said
that all of Solomon's glory did not measure up to one lily of
the field. Yet his wisdom was great. He
prayed for wisdom to rule Israel. God gave him wisdom and added
riches also. And his wisdom was so renowned
that his name became synonymous with wisdom. His name became
proverbial. You hear it even today, the wisdom
of Solomon. The man has the wisdom of Solomon.
Great people visited him to hear of science and theology, to learn
from him. The Queen of Sheba was amazed
and utterly amazed at his wisdom. He had understanding, and the
book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes reveal that,
if you read them. He could even encapsulate eternity. Look over at Ecclesiastes chapter
3. We talk about eternity, and we
don't know what to say about it because it's just outside
the realm of our understanding. But it wasn't outside the realm
of his understanding, inspired by the Holy Spirit. He wrote
in verse 14 of Ecclesiastes 3, I know that whatsoever God doeth,
it shall be forever. Nothing can be put to it, nor
anything taken from it. God doeth it that men should
fear before Him. Verse 15 stands as the simple,
profound declaration of eternity. That which hath been is now. That which is to be hath already
been, and God requireth that which is past. You want to know
what eternity is? Now, you can't explain that.
But there it is in the simplest of terms. It has nothing to do
with time. It has nothing to do with a clock. Everything right now before God,
from the beginning of time to the end of time, is right now
before God. Nothing is new to Him. Nothing
is old to Him. everything is right in front
of him. Solomon was politically astute, employing marriage and
concubinery to expand his influence and make secure his kingdom. But as it is with humanity, fame
and fortune and humanity make for a bad mix. Fame gathers around gathers those
around you whose job entails little else but agreeing with
you. Sycophants abound, and Solomon
was no exception to that rule. Riches and importance opens avenues
which would better be left closed. In this passage, we find our
Lord dealing with Solomon in chastisement. And regardless
of the action of chastisement, regardless of how God exercises
it, two things are always true of chastisement. It has nothing
to do with judgment. It has nothing to do with punishment. It has to do with correction.
And the second thing is this, it always has the same intent
and result, to turn the head to turn the eyes back to what
they ought to be looking at, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, this context reveals that Solomon has come to a bad place. He's rich. He's famous. He's got tons of wives, tons
of concubines. He's even involved in some idolatrous
worship. It's a sad end to a great career. And the Lord is about to fix
that. And He does it by being Lord over all. Those who have been given faith
do not look at the decline of this great King and harbor some
sense of self-righteous indignation. It's sad. It's a sad story. They are rather reminded of their
own frailty and assured in their hearts that if God but for a
moment lifts His finger of restraining grace, their end would be worse
than that of Solomon. We must pray like David that
our Lord would keep us from presumptuous sins and always cause us to take
heed when we think we stand, to remember that our feet are
on the rim of a slippery precipice. It is true that when the mighty
are fallen, the noise is greater. But for the grace of God, this
will be the end of the believer, and by the grace of God, it may
be the end of every believer. A dear brother told me many years
ago that men don't remember how you started out, but they never
forget how you end up. Shakespeare said in the play
of Julius Caesar, the evil that men do live after them, the good
is oft interred with their bones. And the world pretty much is
only aware of the greatness and wisdom of Solomon. And for that,
I'm grateful. When you talk about Solomon,
they seem to have a good report of him. But it is pure grace
that the believer has the entire record of Solomon's life. as a reminder that grace not
only is the account of our astounding benefits, but is likewise an
account that we have all received from God and what we have received
we can never, ever deserve. We all need the report of Solomon's
decline as much as we need the report of his greatness. We need
it. The words of Paul come to mind in that great chapter in
Romans 7 After he said, Who shall deliver me from the body of this dead? I
thank God through Jesus Christ. And then he said, In plain terms,
the life of every child of God from the day he is converted
to the day he dies. With my mind, I serve the law of God. In my
mind, I want to do what's right. But with my flesh, I serve the law of sin and death.
And what I want to consider this hour is the means that God uses
to chastise Solomon in his declining years. And these verses are the
fulfillment of a prophecy that God made to David concerning
Solomon back in 2 Samuel. Hold your place there at 1 Kings.
And go back one book to 2 Samuel chapter 7. In 2 Samuel chapter 7, verse
12, it says, And when thy days be fulfilled, God is speaking
to David, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and I will set up
thy seat after thee, that is Solomon, which shall proceed
out of thy vows, and I will establish his kingdom, and he shall build
a house for my name. And I will establish the throne
of his kingdom forever, and I will be his father, and he shall be
my son. And if he commit iniquity, I
will chasten him with the rod of men, with the rod of men,
and with the stripes of the children of men. But my mercy shall not
depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away
before thee." That's the prophecy. This is the fulfillment. Hey,
Dad, and reason. are the fulfillment of that prophecy.
They are the chastisement of men by the hands of men. And often when men read passages
like this, they spend a great amount of energy trying to shield
God from any wrongdoing. He doesn't need man's protection
and is not concerned with what men think of Him. That's our
business. Men think that for God to stir
up men to do harm somehow diminishes His goodness. This notion is
rampant in today's religiously ignorant minds. Men look at calamity
or the brutal thing that happens here and there, the thing that
offends their sensibilities and bad things happening to good
folks, they say, and say things like, how could a good God Allow
these things to happen. Allow. How about cause? At the heart of such thinking
is a carnal wish that there really was no God at all. But the primary
thought comes from refusal to acknowledge God as the sovereign
ruler of all things and all people, holding all things and all people
in absolute sway over every creature and every inanimate object. Marnard
said this, if you think God is a monster, get ready to meet
a monster. Was it not good that Joseph's
brethren hated him so that in the end he would be
their salvation? Was it not good to raise up Pharaoh
just to cast him down that God would show forth His glory? in
the deliverance of His people by the blood and death of the
substitute. Was it not good that evil men hated Christ and refused
His reign? And that led them to crucify
Him and has proved part and parcel
of the salvation of the elect. For against Thy holy child Jesus,
both Pontius Pilate and Herod, And the Jews and Gentiles gathered
together for to do whatsoever had been before ordained to be
done." It was Solomon in his declining years that he wrote being aware of
the vanity of everything. He wrote, by inspiration, there
is a time to kill, a time to break down, a time to weep, a
time to lose, a time to rend, a time of war. and of the travail
that man has exercised, and that man cannot know what God is doing
at any time, and yet at all times, all things, everything is beautiful
in God's time. To everything there is a season,
for every purpose unto heaven. Our emotions and sentimentality
do not equip us to see past circumstance. That's unfortunate, but it's
true. So human beings cannot help but judge things before
time. Thank the Lord for the faith
that He has given His elect. Though they might find themselves
often perplexed by circumstances cast down and bowed down by God,
there is an inward anchor that holds the mind and heart in place
with the understanding that our answer is God who holds the reins
and makes no mistakes and shall always do what is right. Faith does not rely on circumstance,
but sees what cannot be seen, looks at what cannot be seen, believes what cannot be proven,
and embraces the invisible that rules all things. The only thing
real, I know men talk about a little translation of Scripture, The
only literal translation of Scripture is a spiritual translation of
Scripture. And you can't see that. The title of my message
this morning is this. As God gathers and disperses
here and there, ruling with good, honorable, omnipotent, unchallengeable
will, which is sweet solace to the believer, I've entitled this message, Everybody's
Got a Job. Everybody's got a job. There's
zero employment in God's economy. There's zero unemployment in
God's economy. This is the report of God using
the hatred of two men to chasten Solomon with the rod of men and
with the stripes of the children of men. In God's economy, everybody's got a job. And everybody's going to do their
job. Hadad was a member of the royal house of Edom who escaped
the massacre under Joab and fled with a band of followers into
Egypt. And after David's death and Joab's death, he returned
to his own country. Rezan was the son of Elida, a
Syrian, who led a band of mercenaries and established a petty kingdom
in Damascus in the time of David and Solomon. And these two had
one thing in common. They hated Israel, and they hated
every king who ruled there. And the truth here is plain and
unadorned and unapologetic. These evil, intractable men,
possessed of overt hatred for God and His people, were employed
by the absolute sovereign to do whatsoever had been aforeordained
to be done. They had a job to do. They had
a job to do. And they were born to this end.
And as they vented their venom, as they did what was the desire
of their hearts, they were fulfilling the purpose that had been laid
out for them from all eternity. They were the vessels of dishonor,
sure. They were used for a while and cast upon the pile of potsherds
with the rest of the potsherds. They were vessels of wrath, made
to destroy, fitted to destruction, gainfully employed to serve the
will of the Master, as you and I and all humanity everywhere. And in every place does. In the economy of God's purpose,
there is zero unemployment. Everything and every creature
has a purpose that He will surely, assuredly fulfill. Because He doeth His will in
the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.
and none can stay his hand or say unto him, What doest thou?
There is more here in this passage. The names of these two instruments
of affliction and chastisement define one infamous character. Haydad means mighty. Rezon means
prince, the mighty prince who did well in Egypt. and was the
ersatz king of a band of mercenaries, was used as an instrument of
chastisement in the hands of the Almighty, the true king of
all, that is. Satan is called the prince of
the power of the air. He is called a dignitary in Scripture. He is called the son of the morning
with all his infamy and grandeur and derived power over men. He
is but God's ape. He is God's pawn and an instrument
in the scheme of God's purpose, who delights to destroy, who
hates God and his people and is used by his creator to do
good for his elect. Always. Always. He cannot touch you. He cannot touch God's people.
He must crawl on His belly like a reptile to the throne of the
sovereign Savior to get permission to touch one of the anointed.
And with that permission comes the guarantee that that will
be good for the anointed. That will be good for the anointed.
When He was given permission to act out His hatred, when He
has suffered to afflict one of the elect, He is but a scaffold
in the hands of the great physician employed to exercise, or rather
excise, the tumor of rebellion. That's all he is. Hadad and Rezan
and Satan, whom they typify, are merely suffered to be themselves. God does not have to push them
in any direction. He just turns them loose for
a while and lets them be themselves. The heart of the king is in the
hand of the Lord. And as the river is of water,
He turneth it with us wherever He will. That is an agricultural
term. The river is an agricultural
pond. And the picture there is God
standing on a hill beside His pond. And down below Him are
various different gardens that have various different plants
in it. And out of the pond, there are ditches dug toward each one
of these gardens. Each one of these gardens. The
water represents the heart of humanity. What does water do? It's unstable. It always flows
downward, taking the course of least resistance. And that picture
is that God opens the water, lets the water run. And the water
does what water does, downhill. But along the way, God plans
for the water to go there. And so He simply puts His foot
and closes a gate and redirects the water and down it goes toward
the Lord had planned it. Now the water is doing what it
wants to do. The water is doing what water does. It is following
the course of water. But God is directing it backwards
and forward. That's what God is doing with
Hadad and with Rezon and with Satan. and with Satan. Now, we don't mess with Satan.
He's handled folks like us for thousands of centuries. We don't
want to mess with him. But God handles him. He has him on a chain. And he
does exactly what God tells him to do. Now, I expect he don't
like the results of it, because while he's doing it, he thinks
he's gaining some ground here. He's gaining some ground, but
he's not gaining any ground. Solomon's going to end up worshiping
God. You can count on that. He's going
to end up with his eyes back on Christ when all else is stripped
from him. For a moment in the hand of sovereign
restraint, when the hand of sovereign restraint is lifted, men simply
act like themselves in vile hatred. And they do good for God's elect. In the new creation, it's like
the old creation. When it was finished, and it
has been finished, everything's good and very, very
good. Remember, it was God who turned
Satan's eyes to Job. Satan didn't ask to do something
to Job. God said, look over yonder. See my service. He's good. He's righteous. He hates evil. Satan said, well, you've given
Him everything. Why wouldn't He worship you?
Does He worship you for nothing? Yeah, that's really how He worships
God. That's how all of us do. Worship
Him for nothing. Not because of what? We have,
which can be taken away in a moment's notice, we worship God because
God is God. Does He worship you for nothing? So God answered him and said,
well, take everything you've got and we'll see. And so Satan was allowed to take
everything the man had. I mean everything the man had,
except his old odious wife who gave him a hard time. God left
a little bit of thorn in his side there. And after he had taken everything,
the man had his children, his wealth, his camels, his money. He stripped him of what he had
in the bank. He didn't have nothing. Job said,
Well, I'm naked when I got here. I'm naked when I go out too.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name
of the Lord. Satan came back. The Lord said,
Have you observed my servant Job? He didn't sin against me. when God allowed you to take
everything He had? He said, well, let Me touch his
body. Let Me hurt him. Let Me make
him sick. He's healthy still. And when you've got your health,
you've got everything. And so God said, okay, go ahead. And He smote him with boils. where he couldn't even lay down.
He sat by the fireside and scraped his balls with a pot shirt. But
in all this, he did not sin against God. Satan was used to do what? For Job to fall wholly and completely
in the arms of God. In the arms of God. Satan could
only touch Job as God gave him permission and all for God's
glory. Satan did his job, and as the
waves of the sea, God said, hither shalt thou come, and no further.
And Simon Peter, full of pride and sure of himself, sure that
he would never deny Christ, was confronted with the words of
Luke 22. Simon, Simon. He only said that
to a few people. Seven people in Scripture, he
said their name twice. Simon was one of them. Kind of like when you look at
your children. As a father pitieth his children.
Simon, Satan has decided to shift you like wheat. But I prayed
for you that your faith fail you not, and not if, and when
thou art converted. Help your brethren. Help the
brethren. That little phrase, and when
thou art converted, that word when tells us In all of that
sifting, and he got sifted, he got sifted so bad that he stood
in an open place and denied the Lord Jesus Christ three times.
He got sifted. He got sifted. In all of that
sifting, there was something out beyond the sifting that God
had already planned. When thou art converted, there
was a plan in force. Sure, Simon's conversion It tells
us that behind the plan there is a purpose. And part of the
plan is Satan's desire to sift Simon as wheat. And though he
will be sifted, the restriction upon Satan is that he cannot
go farther than Christ's intercession. Simon Peter having been chastised
and Satan having been used as the instrument of chastisement
is told as a result of his experience to strengthen the brethren. Because everybody's got a job
in God's economy. Everybody does. And you know
what your job's going to do? Whether you're a believer this
morning or an infidel, whether you love God or hate God, you
know what your job's going to do? It's going to glorify God. It's going to bring glory to
His grace in the salvation of the elect by the substitutionary
sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Well, what can we say to such
a thing? That we see folks doing awful things. Things that scare
us. Things that shake us. Things
that cause us to wonder about our country, about the politics
going on, about the violence here and there. What in the world
is going on? Everybody's got a job. And all
we can say is, now unto Him that is able to keep us from falling,
To present you faultless before the presence of His glory with
exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and
majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.