The book of 1 Kings chapter 12.
The book of 1 Kings actually could
be called the 3rd Kings. If you look at the heading of
1 and 2 Samuel it will say also referred to as the book of 1
Kings and 2 Kings. But the way that it was pinned
down was that Samuel would be called Samuel and the Kings would
be called the Kings. But 1 Kings could be 3 Kings and 2 Kings
could be 4 Kings. But it starts with David and
David's death, and it goes to Solomon. For the first 12 chapters,
we hear about a man named Solomon. And we're very familiar with
Solomon. He's a type and a picture of Christ. He was the one that
the Lord had raised up in order for him, as he mentions to David,
the one that will have an eternal kingdom, not just a temporary
kingdom. And we know that that wasn't possible for Solomon to
have that, so it's a type and picture of Christ. Christ was
gonna establish whenever he became a man and establish his kingdom
for his people. But we see that Solomon had his
faults and I love that our Lord puts throughout the entire scripture,
these men that we look at and we think, well, they believed
God and they did good and they, We need to be more like them
is what I heard in religion. But every man that you'll read about,
we see their sin coming to fruition. We see that they were just sinners,
that they were born in sin and shaped into iniquity, that they
were not good men in and of themselves. Yet the Lord's declaration of
these men were, David was a man after God's own heart, even though
he was an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon was a man that got with
strange women, strange wives. He didn't stay within the realm
of Israel. It was forbidden to marry outside
of Israel. And yet he brings in foreign women from Egypt and
different places that had different gods. And he allows them to put,
he even burnt incense before these false gods. So we know
that when the Lord was talking about his everlasting kingdom
and how it was going to be perfect, that Solomon wasn't the one that
was going to bring that, was he? It was the Lord Jesus Christ
is what he was referring to. In chapter 11, we find Solomon
had appointed Jeroboam, a man by the name of Jeroboam, to be
ruler over all the house of Joseph. The 12 tribes of Israel, each
of them had a house, and they had a realm in the land of Canaan
that was given to them once they came into the promised land,
and this would also be considered the tribe of Manasseh, as the
scripture says, but that would be Joseph's son. But we see that
because of Solomon's unbelief that he was told by a prophet
that there was going to be a split, his kingdom was gonna be split
and it was no longer going to be his kingdom, no longer going
to be David's kingdom. He was going to bring forth a
division among the children of Israel and he does so. The kingdom
was rent according to the words of Ahijah. Now that's not to
be confused with Elijah. That's totally different. Ahijah
was a man, a prophet at this time that we find here that comes
to Jeroboam and he rends a garment into 12 pieces. And he says,
the kingdom that belongs to Solomon is going to be rent and you're
going to receive 10 parts of the kingdom and the other is
going to be left for a remnant. It was Judah. And we also know
it was Benjamin as well, but it was Judah was going to be
the other part of the kingdom that was going to be established
or going to be to the South would have been Judah and to the North
would have been Israel. Now I'm giving us this history lesson
so that we can understand exactly what's happening. What's, what's
taking place. We can learn that there's consequences
for our actions according to the flesh as Solomon was told
that was going to happen. And that's exactly what happened.
The King was rent from him and it was, the kingdom was split.
But we see that Rehoboam, Solomon's son, reigned in his stead, and
it happened exactly the way that the Lord had prophesied that
it was going to happen. When Jeroboam hears that he's
going to be made king over Israel, Solomon gets word of it. Solomon
tries to kill Jeroboam. He says, I'm gonna take his life.
He's not gonna be the king, I'm the king. And Jeroboam flees
into Egypt. Well, during the process of time,
while Jeroboam's in Egypt, Then we see that Rehoboam, Solomon's
son, was born and he did reign in Solomon's stead. When Jeroboam
hears that Solomon is gone, or that Solomon's died, he comes
back and he says, unto Rehoboam, your father grieved us with yokes
and burdens. Are you gonna lighten these burdens
for us? We see that Rehoboam conferred
with the old men, the old men that had wisdom. And I'll say
something on that, young people. People, the elders didn't get
old by being stupid. You're not the age that you are
because making stupid decisions. The Lord's kept you alive and
kept you, these elders, we can look to them for the wisdom that
they have and the things that the Lord's brought them to. We
can look unto them for instruction, for encouragement. And the scripture
tells us that clearly. So Rehoboam was right for seeking
counsel from the older men, the wise men, right? But he also
seeks counsel from the young men. And the young men say, increase
their burdens, don't lighten them. Tell them instead of lashes,
we're gonna discipline them with scorpions. That was exactly what
he said. Tell them that you're the king and that you're in charge.
And that's exactly what Rehoboam does. And therefore the children
of Israel rebelled against Rehoboam and Jeroboam was made king over
the 10 tribes as it was prophesied. When Jeroboam became king over
these 10 northern tribes, he knew that the children of Israel
desired worship in Jerusalem, which was still in Judah, is
the place that men worship. We know that because of what
the scripture has told us, has communicated. Jeroboam was afraid
if the children of Israel went back to Judah to worship in Jerusalem,
that maybe they would follow after Rehoboam rather than himself,
and so he takes matters into his own hands. and he puts two
statues, two calves, one at the northern entrance and one at
the southern entrance, Dan and Bethel. Now we're in chapter
12, and I had to preface all of this, so if I just started
reading, we wouldn't understand everything that's happening, but now we've
got a king that's established these over 10 tribes of Israel,
and he's saying, okay, these people need to worship, or they're
gonna go back to Rehoboam, who's the southern tribe, the southern
kingdom. So now we're in chapter 12, and then we're in verse 25,
and it says, Then Jeroboam built Shechem in Mount Ephraim and
dwelt therein and went out from thence and built Penuel. Jeroboam
said in his heart, now shall the kingdom return to the house
of David. If this people go up to do sacrifice
in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this
people turn again unto their Lord, even unto Rehoboam, king
of Judah. And they shall kill me and go
again to Rehoboam, king of Judah. Whereupon the king took counsel
and made two calves of gold and said unto them, it is too much
for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And set one in Bethel
and the other put he in Dan. Now I want us to understand the
meaning of the names here. Bethel is the house of God. That's
how it translates, the house of God. He put a golden calf
in the house of God and he put a golden calf in the house of
Dan. The term Dan translates judge. What was he saying? We're gonna
be our own judges. We're gonna do what seemeth right
in our eyes, and that's exactly what he does. In verse 30 it
says, and this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship
before the one, even unto Dan, and he made a house of high places
and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not
of the sons of Levi. And Jeroboam ordained a feast
in the eighth month on the 15th day of the month, like unto the
feast that is in Judah. And he offered upon the altar,
so did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made.
And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had
made. So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel,
the 15th day of the eighth month, even in the month, which he had
devised of his own heart and ordained a feast unto the children
of Israel. And he offered upon the altar
and burned incense. When man is left to himself,
he will do exactly, exactly what Jeroboam did. Jeroboam set up
two calves in the Northern kingdom of Israel, one at the North entrance
and one at the Southern entrance. One at the judge and one at the
house of God. And he said, behold, your gods
that have brought you out of the land of Egypt. We've already
spoken, brethren, recently on the holiness of God and how men
ought to worship him. And I'm thankful that we're able
to build. It seems like the Lord's causing us to be able to build
off of what we've heard from week to week. It's been an encouragement
to me. That wasn't by my design, the Lord's done that, I'm so
thankful. But we know because of the ordinances and all the
things that the priests had to go through, the charges that
the Lord had set forward and the ceremonies and the severity
of the responsibility and the severity of consequence, we see
that Jeroboam not only is wrong in making false gods and making
sacrifice unto them, but he's also wrong in appointing everyone
to be a priest. Every tribe, it didn't matter
your tribe, And that's what men are saying today in false religion,
that Jesus loves everybody and that Jesus died for everybody.
And that's not true. It's not according to the scripture.
That's just not true. Christ loved his people and he
saved his people. He didn't try. He didn't make
an offer unto man. He made an offer unto his father
and his father was satisfied with his son. Much like Jeroboam
though men, take matters into their own hands, don't they?
They say out of fear. And most religion, most religion
is fear-driven if you think about it. I read an article this week
about a servant. There's three kinds of servants.
There's ones that are slaves and they operate or conduct themselves
out of fear. You have ones that are hirelings,
they're bought in order to serve their master. And then you have
the one that's a son that serves out of love and only the Lord's
people serve him out of love. Everyone else is dead and trespasses
and in sin, but the Lord's people have been made to know God and
made to love him. Why? Because he first loved us. And
we serve him for that reason, don't we? These consequences,
this severity of consequences are predominant throughout scripture.
You remember Aaron's sons, whenever the fire went out, and they said,
okay, well, we can get two sticks and rub them together and make
our own fire and put it back on the altar. That's not exactly
what they said, but you understand what I mean. They took matters
into their own hands. We can make fire ourself. Yeah, the
fire went out, but we'll fix it. We can fix whatever's been
broken. We can take care of it ourself. And it wasn't true,
was it? What happened whenever they put the fire upon the altar?
God killed them, didn't he? He rained fire down from heaven
and destroyed them on the spot. What about Eli's sons we heard
about last week? Two sons of Eli was profaning
the sacrifices. Rather than allowing it to be
burnt to the Lord, they came in and they wanted their food
medium rare. At the end, whenever the sacrifice
was done, whatever was left over, they would take. That's not the
way they did it. The way that they did it was,
is they took it first and they cooked it the way that they wanted
it and they was eating it. They were profaning the sacrifice of the
Lord. They were also laying with the women that was coming to
make sacrifice. So what did the Lord do to them? The Lord killed
them as well, didn't he? Why? Because they didn't honor
the Lord's words. They didn't do things God's way,
and the Lord killed them for it. You remember King Uzziah? King Uzziah thought he would
burn incense before the Lord, didn't he? He didn't need a priest.
You remember whenever, in Isaiah chapter 40, when Isaiah said,
in the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted
up? The reason he saw him that way was because Uzziah went in
And he said, I'm gonna burn incense before God. I'm good enough to
do this in and of myself. Now, he genuinely desired to
worship God. Don't misunderstand. But the
problem is, is he didn't worship God God's way. He wanted to worship
God himself and present himself unto the Lord. And what did the
Lord do to him? He smote him with leprosy, didn't he? The
rest of his life, he was cast out as a outcast of the children
of Israel. He smote him with leprosy and
he died. He died. What about, there's so many others. Uzzah, Uzzah was doing his best
to try to help stabilize the ark as they were bringing the
ark back from the Philistines into Israel. And the ark began
to shake a little bit, looked like it was gonna fail. And it
makes perfect sense to me to do the same thing Uzzah would
do and put your hands to it to save it from falling. It was
the ark of God. God said, don't touch it. Don't touch it, I'm
holy. I'm other than you. Don't touch
it, lest you die. And what happened to Uzzah? God
killed him on the spot, didn't he? Soon as he touched it, life
went from him. God killed him. So what is all
this? What is the Lord teaching us
in all of this? God's holiness demands justice. God's law demands death for those
that trespass against it. God is other than we are. He
is high. His thoughts are not our thoughts.
His ways are not our ways. We cannot do anything to pacify,
to suffice. We're not sufficient for our
merits to please the Lord. We're not sufficient, but Christ
was all sufficient, wasn't he? We need a substitute, not just
in worship, but in salvation and in everything. a substitute,
and we have one, Jesus Christ the righteous. Men want to bring their own works
unto the Lord, just as Jeroboam was bringing works, trying to
worship God his way. What about Cain? Cain, Lord said,
without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. Adam had
to teach his sons how to do sacrifice. Adam's the one that taught his
sons how to do sacrifice, and so Cain knew good and well he
had to bring a blood sacrifice unto the Lord, but he didn't,
did he? He brought the works of his hand. Now, do you believe
he brought second best unto the Lord? No, he brought his very,
very, very best. And God was not pleased with
Cain or his sacrifice, but into Abel and Abel's sacrifice, he
had respect. Why? Because he took a lamb and
he killed that lamb. And the Lord smelled that lamb
as a sweet smelling saber coming up. It was a type of the Lord
Jesus Christ dying for his people, shedding his precious blood,
putting away our sin, and the Lord was pleased with his son. And the Lord is pleased with
all of those for whom Christ died because they've been put
in Christ. When Christ died, his people died. When Christ
was resurrected, his people was resurrected. When Christ sat
down on the right hand of the Father, his people sat down in him, perfectly
righteous before the Lord. Most churches are doing exactly
what Cain did, bringing in the works of their hands rather than
looking unto Christ. These children of Israel making
these calves and offering them up goes all the way back to Exodus.
Exodus 32, if you'd like to turn there. Exodus 32. And this is when the children
of Israel, the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt.
And we've got to understand they just saw the Red Sea parted.
They just saw that happen. And here they are at Mount Sinai
receiving the Lord's commandments from Moses. Moses goes up into
the mountain. And by the way, when Moses went
into the mountain, the Lord said, don't let your cattle come near
the mountain. Don't put your hand to the mountain.
Don't touch it because you'll die if you come near. Why? Because
God's holy. Now the children of Israel here
in Exodus 32, This is where this feast came from that was in Judah.
And it's important that we understand that what they named these calves
was Jehovah. They literally named the calves
Jehovah. And that's what I've titled this
message, A Calf Named Jehovah. But here in Exodus 32, verse
one, And when the people saw that
Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered
themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him, up, make us
gods, which shall go before us for as for this Moses, the man
that brought us out of the land of Egypt, we want not what has
become of him. And Aaron said unto them, break
off the golden earrings, which are in your ears of your wives
and your sons and of your daughters and bring them unto me. And of
all, And all the people break off the golden earrings which
were in their ears and brought them unto Aaron. And he received
them at their hand and fashioned it with a graven tool after he
had made it a molten calf. And they said, these be thy gods,
O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron
made proclamation and said, tomorrow is a feast to the Lord. Now,
when you see capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's
Jehovah. That's what that word is, Jehovah.
Aaron's saying tomorrow is a feast unto Jehovah. And they rose up
early on the morning and offered burnt offerings and brought peace
offerings. And the people sat down to eat and to drink and
rose up to play. They had just passed over the
Red Sea and because Moses tarried, they make a golden calf and they
name it Jehovah, and they sacrifice to it. Isn't that incredible? That should tell us something
about our depravity. That should tell us a lot about
our depravity, what we would do if left to ourself. They saw
the power of God in not only parting the Red Sea, but destroying
their enemies, the Egyptians. And yet they make something that
they can feel, something that they can see, something that
they can touch because it made them feel good. They did not
want to worship God his way. The Lord has nothing. He has
nothing promised to your flesh for righteousness. He put away
the sin of his people on the cross and what we do, but he
did not come to save your flesh. He did not come to save my flesh.
He came to save his people eternally from their sin. Their soul, that's
what he came to save and he did. He successfully saved his people. Now, the name of this calf being Jehovah,
they likened it unto, that's what Apostle Paul was talking
about in Romans chapter one when he said they make things likened
unto birds and fish and creeping things and they worship and serve
the creature more than the creator. But understand, brethren, we're
not making graven images as far as what we worship, are we? We
don't have statues around our house or pictures of Jesus or
other trinkets and things that remind us of the Lord. We don't
have those things because the Lord's people know that they're
graven images. So what does men do though? What does men do by
nature instead? They worship and serve the creature.
They make their own God out of themselves. They make their own
choices in salvation. And that's literally taking the
place of God. That's promoting themselves unto the Lord and
saying, I'm not as bad as so-and-so. I haven't done this. I haven't
done that. Taste not, touch not, handle
not. And now I'm good enough because I've given my heart to
Jesus. That's not in the Bible. It's not. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the one that hath power over the lump to make one lump of
honor and another to dishonor. Christ Jesus is the one that
said, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. Christ Jesus
put away the sin of his people on the cross of Calvary and that's
the glorious news of the gospel. Because if left to ourself to
make a decision, left to ourself to try to worship, we're gonna
make a calf named Jehovah rather than worship Jesus Christ, the
sovereign I am, the creator and sustainer of life. The one that
saved his people. God's elect have been made to
know there is no other fountain where we can drink and be satisfied.
He's given us a hunger that only he he can fulfill. He can satisfy. The Lord only saves his people
by his gospel. There's people everywhere. Brethren,
right now they're worshiping a false God and they call him
Jesus. They call him Jesus, but he's
not real. He's a figment of their imagination.
Jesus Christ. is the one that put away the
sin of his people. Jesus Christ is the one that
redeemed his people. Jesus Christ is the one that
gets all the glory and salvation. This is who we want to worship,
isn't it? This is who we've been made desirous to worship is the
sovereign I am, the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ. His name's
Jehovah. This is who we desire to worship.
We do this by the Lord saving us by his gospel, giving us his
spirit, giving us eyes of faith, giving us repentance. These children
of Israel understand what happened later on. Moses came down off
the mountain. The Lord slew these men by Moses'
hand, according to the word of the Lord. The Lord slew men that
day because of their unbelief, because of their... Then he grinds
up the calf and puts it in their water and makes them drink it.
False religion tastes bitter to your taste now, doesn't it?
Whenever you hear a false gospel being preached, you don't like
the way that tastes anymore, do you? You know why? Because
you've tasted of the honey of the Lord. You've tasted of the
milk of His Word. You've tasted of the good news
of the Gospel. And there is nothing else that will satisfy you but
the Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work. Now, back in our text, 1 Kings
12, I want to show you why. He gives us the answer. He gives
us what happened. He tells us all the information
that we need to know in chapter 12, verse 33. he offered upon the altar which
he had made in Bethel in the 15th day of the eighth month,
even in the month which he had devised of his own heart, of
his own heart. That's the problem, isn't it?
That's our problem, isn't it, brethren? That the heart is deceitful
above all things and desperately wicked. There's not a good thought
that comes from our heart in God's eyes. The stars are not
even pure in the Lord's eyes, the scripture says. There's an
he created him and yet they're not pure in his eyes. How about
us? Are we pure in his eyes? Only
if we're found in the Lord Jesus Christ, only if we've been washed
in his blood, only if he had put away our sin and he did for
his people, he did. We have nothing to do with it.
We have no part to play. It is finished. Christ put away
the sin of his people and satisfied his father. He gave us a new
heart, didn't he? He gave us a new heart. You remember
in the book of Judges, towards the end, it talks about this.
It says, they had no king. They had no king. And so every
man did that which seemed good in his own eyes. I want us to
understand this morning that when I talk about people in false
religion, these are morally good people as far as man's standards
are concerned. These are not the people that
deserve to be locked up in prison by man's standards. They're not
breaking laws as man's standards concern. Excuse me. But the problem
is, is man judges man based upon man, not God. If we look at what
God says about us, then we see that we're depraved by nature,
that we're utterly utterly sinful, not just a little bit, but every
thought and imagination that we have is sin before Him. Every
thing that we do good, even my preaching right now as I'm trying
to preach to you, if the Lord allows me to die right now and
I'm gonna try to present this moment as my righteousness before
Him, I'll die and go to hell. The very best prayer that I could
ever pray is sin in His eyes. He has to take that prayer, wash
it in His blood, and present it as righteous before His Father.
That's our hope, is that He did that for His people. It's already
finished. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not
our ways, brethren. And even though we try to do
what's good in our own eyes, we can never do good in His eyes.
We need a substitute. We need the sinner substitute,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, we're worshiping a
calf. named Jehovah. Look in chapter 13. The next
verse down. The interjection of the Gospel
takes place here. The Lord comes to Jeroboam. And
it says here, behold, there came a man of God out of Judah by
the word of the Lord unto Bethel and Jeroboam stood by the altar
to burn incense and he cried against the altar in the word
of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar. Thus saith the Lord, behold,
a child shall be born into the house of David, Josiah by name,
and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places
that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt
upon thee. And he gave a sign to the same
day, saying, this is the sign which the Lord hath spoken. Behold,
the altar shall be rent, and ashes that are upon it shall
be poured out. Now here we are, brethren, dead
and trespassing and sin, and we hear of the judgment of the
Lord. And listen to Jeroboam's response. It came to pass that
when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which
had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his
hand from the altar, saying, lay hold on him. And his hand,
which he put forth against him, dried up so that he could not
pull it in again to him. So here we see man at his very
best state. When he hears the gospel, he's
gonna try to do something against God, and God just withers the
hand. Man has no power with God, do they? Man has no power. God is not wringing his hands.
He is not fretting. He is not fearful. God is not
afraid of man. He controls man. He has purposed. all things by the determinant
counsel and foreknowledge of God." That's the only reason
Christ was put to death by man. That's the only reason. Because
the Lord allowed it to be so. He had purposed it to be so to
save his people. Men did the same thing to Christ,
didn't they? They said, we will not have this
man reign over us. And they stretched forth their
hand and God allowed man to do with Christ what man wants to
do with God one time. That's the only time it's ever
gonna happen. And what'd they do to him? Did they make him king?
No, they mocked him by putting a crown of thorns upon his head,
didn't they? They mocked him, they plucked his beard, they
spat upon him, they hit him, they smote him, they beat him
with a cat of nine tails. He was marred beyond recognition,
beyond recognition by man. They killed him. not only in
their heart, but they physically took him into their hands and
put him to death. Now we know that the father was
the one making sacrifice, that Christ was making a sacrifice
and the father was executing judgment upon his son in that
hour. But these men physically wanted to put him to death. They
physically did these things to him. So what am I saying this
morning? I'm saying if left to ourself, that is exactly what
we would do to Jesus Christ. That is exactly what we would
do to God if we had the power to do so. but we have the interjection
of the gospel, but we have the good news here. As soon as we
try to put our hand to it, what happens? The Lord causes it to
wither. Can't touch him. We can't touch the Lord, but
we need one that has touched him. Christ Jesus touched the
father and was not destroyed because he was perfectly righteous.
Christ Jesus touched his people and he was not defiled. Do you
know why he was not defiled? Because everything he touches,
he makes perfect. Everything that Christ Jesus
touched became holy. The person that came up to him,
you remember the woman that pressed through the crowd? Christ didn't
touch her, she touched him, and what happened? He said, virtue
hath left me. I perceive virtue touched me.
The disciples were like, Lord, many people are touching you.
You're enthroned around, people are bumping into you and everything.
What do you mean? Lord, plenty of people touched you. No, he
said, I perceive virtue has went out from me. What does that mean?
That means that this woman, This woman received healing from the
Lord because everything he touches is made perfect. Now, everything
you and I touch is corrupted, isn't it? If you ever put your
hands to something, a situation happens in your life, surely
somebody else can acknowledge the same thing that happens to
me all the time. The very first thing that happens, something
bad goes wrong, or I suppose we call it bad by our standards.
We know that all things work together for good. But if something
goes disarray, we were, doing something the other day that
cost me more time than I really wanted it to do. And I took matters
into my own hand, and the more frustrated I got, the more I
broke it. Isn't that how we are? Well, every time we try to fix
something, we're not fixing it at all, are we? We're messing
it up worse. Now, sometimes the Lord's allowed us to be successful,
and of course, we don't live in a box. We go and we work and
we try and we do, but we don't do it in salvation, do we? Because
we know if we put our hand, if we try to put our hand to salvation,
it'll wither up. We can't touch God. We have to
touch Christ, or moreover, Christ must touch us. And when he does,
when he touches his people, it comes through and by the preaching
of the gospel, and they're perfectly righteous. They're perfectly
beautiful. They're holy in his sight. Isn't
that glorious? Everything he touches, everything
he touches becomes perfect. Now let's read on the altar in
verse five. The altar also was rent and the ashes poured out
from the altar according to the sign which the man of God had
given him by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and
said unto the man of God, entreat now the face of the Lord thy
God and pray for me that my hand may be restored. Restored me
again. And the man of God besought the
Lord and the king's hand was restored him again and became
as it was before. Now here we have the gospel given
to this man, this judgment that is being passed, that Josiah
is gonna come and tear down the altar. That's good news to the
believer. We desire to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
But we see here that whenever his hand withered, did he repent
of his wrongdoing, burning incense before the Lord? Did he realize
in seeing his hand withered God is God and he is not, and did
the Lord give him repentance in that and say, woe is me, I'm
the man. We heard last week, I'm the man.
David, you're the man. He didn't do that, did he? What
did he do? He said, I want my hand back.
Let me have my hand back. Please entreat of the Lord to
restore unto me the physical needs that I have. Isn't that
what men are declaring today in religion? They're preaching
wealth, they're preaching health, They're preaching prosperity
in this life. Christ Jesus came into this world
to save sinners, to bring them to his heavenly kingdom. He said,
my kingdom's not of this world. He didn't come to give us health,
wealth, and prosperity. I will tell you what he does
say, though. David said, I was a young man, now am I old, and
never have I seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging
bread. The Lord will provide for his people. And we believe
that, don't we? Jeroboam wanted his hand back, though. He didn't
want to look to Christ. He didn't desire to look to Christ.
He wanted his hand back. He wanted the physical. That's
exactly what he got. The Scripture talks about when
Paul was preaching, he said that the gospel didn't benefit them
because it wasn't mixed with faith. We can physically hear
the gospel, but that doesn't mean that the Lord's given us
repentance and faith, brethren. We're mercy beggars, aren't we?
Lord, cause me to hear. If I've never heard before, make
this the day that I hear. Lord, if I don't know of your
saving grace, make it effectual today for me. Today is the day
of salvation. Lord, cause me to cry out from
the depths of my heart today. If it's the first time ever,
don't leave me to myself, Lord. That's what his people do, is
it not? We're constantly crying out. We don't have it checked
off and marked down. Okay, we're good to go. And we part ways
and we're fine until We're mercy beggars. Every day we're begging
that the Lord would have mercy upon me, the sinner. Why? Because when he withered our
hand and he showed us that we were nothing but sin, we were
no longer concerned so much with our hand. We were concerned with
our eternal destiny. He gave us repentance, didn't
he? That's what he does for his people. He changes our mind completely
and we no longer worship a calf named Jehovah. We worship the
sovereign I am, the creator of the universe. We do it by the
Lord Jesus Christ. Christ gave a parable, and we
know that it wasn't just a story. We know it was a true account
that took place because he uses a name that happens. The rich
man and Lazarus. You remember the account? Lazarus
sat by the gate, and he begged. He was full of sores. Moreover,
the dog came and licked his sores. The scripture said the rich man
fared sumptuously every day. He was enjoying the pleasures
of life, wasn't he? And they both died. And the scripture
says the rich man being in hell, lifted up his eyes, being in
torment, and he saw Lazarus and Abraham being comforted in Abraham's
bosom afar off. And he said, Father Abraham,
send Lazarus that he may dip his finger in water and cool
my tongue because I am tormented in this flame. He did not ask
for the fountain of living water, did he? He was still wanting
his physical needs met, just like Jeroboam. He was still worshiping
a calf named Jehovah. Hell itself, hell itself is not
enough to give man repentance and faith. It is by the grace
of God that you and I are given repentance and faith by his sovereign
choice, by his right. And the good news is, is he is
going to give it to every single person that he died for. In the
fullness of time, He's gonna come to you. He's gonna show
you that your hand is withered. He's gonna show you that all
you've been doing is worshiping a calf named Jehovah, and He's
gonna show you that He is God, and you're going to repent, and
you're going to believe if He died for you. There is now, therefore,
no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. The Lord
put away the sin of His people, and now we worship Christ in
spirit and in truth. God's prophet here departs from
Jeroboam. He goes back, but before he arrived,
to begin with, when God gave him the message to go down, he
told this prophet, the Lord doesn't tell us his name, he just says
a man of God. He tells Jeroboam, or God had told this man, this
man of God, don't eat anything, don't drink anything, and don't
sleep there, come right back. Stay away from it, don't have
any part to do with it. That's why the scripture tells
you and I the same thing when it comes to false religion. Come
out from among them and be you separate. We don't intermingle
with false religion. We can't go down to these other
churches, brethren, and partake in what they do. We don't worship
God that way. We do not. We worship God in spirit and
in truth because he's made us to be thus. Man of God departs
and he comes down away. And look in verse 11 with me.
Now there dwelt an old prophet in Bethel, and his sons came
and told him all the works the man of God had done the day in
Bethel, the works which he had spoken unto the king, them that
told also to their father. And their father said unto them,
what way went he? For his sons had seen what way
the man of God went, which came from Judah. And he said unto
his sons, saddle me the ass. So they saddled him the ass,
and he rode thereon, and went after the man of God, and found
him sitting under the oak, And he said unto him, Art thou the
man of God that camest from Judah? And he said, I am. Then he said
unto him, Come with me, come home with me, and eat bread.
And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee,
neither will I eat bread, nor drink water with thee in this
place. For it was said unto me, By the
word of the Lord, thou shalt not, thou shalt eat no bread,
nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou
camest. He said unto him, I am a prophet
also as thou art. An angel spake unto me by the
word of the Lord, saying, bring him back with thee into thine
house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied
unto him. So he went back with him and
did eat bread in his house and drank water. If you continue
to read on, and we're not going to right now, but you'll find
out that God killed that prophet. because he disobeyed him. But
the most interesting part to me is the words, he lied to him
and the prophet believed him. Paul said this, he said, even
if an angel from heaven comes down and declares another gospel
unto you other than what you've heard me speak, don't have any
part to do with it. Don't partake in that worship
because it's not of God. The Lord never has contradicted
himself. The Lord does not, water his gospel down. The Lord does
not bend over or bend backwards or preach a half-truth. He declares
that it is finished by the finished work of Christ, that he elected
a people before the foundation of the world. He gave those people
to his son. His son became a man, lived a
perfect life, was made a sacrifice for the sin of his people, for
his elected people. God executed his son by putting
his soul, making his soul an offering for sin. And because
he was satisfied, he resurrected his son and his son is now seated
at his right hand. And now the gospel goes forth
and the Lord gets all of those in time that he saved from the
foundation of the world. Men are not declaring this, are
they brethren? Men are declaring that Jesus loves everybody, that
he died for everybody. that he wants you to have a prosperous
life, that he wants to have a personal relationship with you. Why don't
you let Jesus into your heart? That's what men say. God don't
want our heart. Our heart's deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked, as I've already mentioned. We
need a new heart, don't we? One that can praise him. That's
what we need. The very term let Jesus into your heart is nauseating
because you're letting God do something for you. We don't let
God. He's God. He's God. He's sovereign. He's
all powerful, all supreme. We know this to be true, don't
we? This has been made predominantly true to the child of God. We
rest in his sovereignty. But so many are following after
this lie. He lied to him. I'm a prophet too. That's what
he said, I'm a prophet also and the angel came and told me that
you can come eat with me, it's perfectly fine. Isn't that the
lie going forth today? You can sow fig leaves together
and you'll be just fine before the Lord. They'll tell him they're
naked, but then they'll tell him how to sow fig leaves together.
But it wasn't Adam and Eve's fig leaves that covered their
nakedness, was it? God had to cover their nakedness. He did
it by the sacrifice of a lamb, covered him with skin. And that
represents the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? God is God. He's not a calf named
Jehovah. He's not an item or a figment
of our imagination. He's not a thing. He's a person.
He's God. And we bow to him. Jeroboam died
without God. He died without hope. He died
not knowing God here. He didn't know God here. He might've
had a head knowledge of who God was. He had enough knowledge
of who God was in order to make an altar, didn't he? In order
to burn incense, in order to make sacrifice, even knew his
name, but he did not know who God is. The Lord Jesus Christ
is God. The Lord Jesus Christ is God.
And what did the father say about his son? Here is my beloved son. Hear ye him. The Lord is satisfied
with his son. Now in closing, I want to turn
because I have some good news for us. We have an account. we have an account of the Lord
Jesus Christ saving someone from all this ideology of a calf named
Jehovah. He saved someone out of this.
First of all, he saved me out of that. I was just as guilty
as Jeroboam was in my own heart, devising things and thinking
I was serving God. I wasn't serving God. I wasn't
worshiping God. I was serving myself. I didn't even know I
was doing it. That's the scariest part. The Lord had to pass by
and say, live. and then the Lord makes alive,
doesn't he? Lord has to pass by and say, see, and then the
blind eyes are open. Not a choice that we make. He
did that. He does that for his people. This Samaritan woman
is in John chapter four. Turn there with me. The Lord
saved this woman out of this ideology. This is our hope, brethren. I love the way that it words
starting out that the Lord must needs go through Samaria. Why
did he need to go through Samaria? Did he have a need? Did he have
a need? No, she had a need, right? She
had a need for a savior. She had a need that the Lord
would show mercy. You and I have a need. What does
God need? Think about that. What does God
need? God doesn't need anything from you and I, does he? He's
God. It says the Lord must needs. It was required of the Lord to
get his sheep because it was given unto him of his father.
And that's what he does. He gets his sheep. He's already
got them, but he gets them in time. He must needs go to Samaria,
and he finds a woman at the well, and as he approaches her, verse
11, it says, the woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing
to draw with. The well is deep, from whence thou then hast thou
that living water. Art thou greater than our father
Jacob, which giveth us this well, and drank thereof himself, and
his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and saith unto
her, Whosoever drinketh this water shall thirst again. Whosoever drinketh of this water
shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the
water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that
I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing
up into everlasting life. Now, understand, she's thinking
it's a physical water that he's gonna give her and she's never
gonna be thirsty again. So she gets excited just as Jeroboam
had a physical need. She has a physical need to have
this water, doesn't she? What does she say to him? Verse
15, the woman saith unto him, "'Give me this water that I thirst
not, "'neither come hither to draw.'" Men want their physical
needs met, don't they? And that's what most churches
are doing, is they're offering physical needs met, whether they
realize it or not. That's exactly what men are offering.
As I've already said to us before, the health, the wealth, the prosperity,
and things like that, we don't come here to have our physical
needs met, do we? We come here to have our spiritual
needs met. We have a need. And this is where the Lord said
He would meet His people. And so if He's gonna be present,
if you, and I've given this analogy to our congregation several times,
but if you knew that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was gonna be
present on the earth, physically, on the other side of the world,
next week, and you had the means to get there, the money and the
time to get there, would you not go and meet Him? Would you
not go and see Him? Of course you would. Brethren,
this is the place that God said I'll be. where two or three are
gathered in my name, there I am in the midst. This is where the
Lord said, I'll be. How much worship, this is in our own town,
isn't it? Most of us are less than an hour away from here.
This is where he said, I'll meet with you. That's why we come,
isn't it? We're hoping to see him. We're hoping to worship
Jehovah, not a calf named Jehovah, but the, the Jehovah, the Lord
Jesus Christ. This woman had thought that the
Lord was gonna meet her physical needs, but the Lord had much
more, much better news. Think about this, if you come
to the Lord's house, if you come to worship and your physical
needs are met, you're given financial, all your financial needs are
met, you have time, you have health and all that, what good,
what good does it a man to gain the whole world and lose his
own soul? What shall a man give in exchange
for his soul, the scripture says? We need a substitute, don't we?
We need the Lord to save our soul. We need the Lord to have
put away our sin And that's what he does for our sister here,
this woman at the well. Look in verse 16. Jesus said unto
her, go call thy husband and come hither. The woman answered
and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, thou hast
well said, I have no husband. For thou hast five husbands,
and he them thou with. Thou now hast is not thy husband. In that, say it truly. The woman
said unto him, sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Now,
as soon as you start talking to someone about God, anything,
It has to do with religion, if you want to say it even that
way. They will throw their trump card down as their God. They
will expose themselves of what their righteousness is pretty
quickly. And that's exactly what she does. She says Jerusalem's
the place that you say men ought to worship. She said, but we
worship in this mountain. Now that mountain that she's
referring to is found in Deuteronomy. It's the Mount Gerizim. It's
the one that the Lord looked unto He said, bless this mountain
and curse this mountain. Mount Gerizim was the one of
the blessing. So they believed that they were truly worshiping
God. The problem with this, what this woman's ideology is, goes
all the way back. Do you remember the man named
Balaam? The man named Balaam taught the children of Israel,
tricked the children of Israel in bringing in and intermarrying
against the word of the Lord, the Canaanites. Different tribes
of the land of Canaan, the land of Canaan. And so these false
gods came with these others. And now you have half-breed Jews.
That's what this woman is, a half-breed Jew. She knew enough about God,
about the God of Israel, in order to speak on worship. They were
worshiping God in the form of a cat. They were worshiping God
in the form of a dog and a donkey and the sun and the moon. That's
the five ones that they had. And you know what they named
him? Jehovah. Jehovah. The Lord said, you worship,
you know not what. God is a spirit, and they that
worship must worship in spirit and in truth. Well, as soon as
she hears that, as soon as she hears these words from the Lord,
what does she do? Does she confess that she's wrong? No, she says,
well, Messiah's gonna come and he'll set you straight. That
was her attitude, wasn't it? When Messiah's come, he'll tell us
all things. You're gonna find out you're wrong. And what does God say?
God says, I am. Her eyes were opened. Her ears
were opened. Her feet gained strength. She
could walk. She was made alive, wasn't she? Made alive by His
word. I am. You know what happened? She left her water pot. She went
back to the city and said, come see a man that told me all things
ever I did. Is this not Christ? Is this not the Christ? And it
says she left her water pot. All of her ideas about Jehovah
being a calf, all of her ideas about Jehovah being a dog or
a cat or something likened to something we can touch or something
we can see with our own eyes. Her mind was completely changed,
wasn't it, brethren? Her mind was completely made
different because God gave her repentance and faith and God
saved her. This is the good news of the gospel. Repentance is
acknowledgement of knowing nothing save Christ Jesus and him crucified. We count all things but done
that we may win Christ. When we see who God is, we no
longer worship a calf named Jehovah. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ.
We bow to him, don't we? Father, we pray that you'll bless
your word. Thank you for opening up the eyes of your people. Thank you for causing us to worship
the one true God, you. It's in Christ's name we pray,
amen.