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What Will Be Said Of You - Immersed Series
32 Plays3 days ago
Sunday morning sermon from Ridley Barron.
Recommended
Transcript
The Search for Meaning in Life
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Speaker
Meaningless, meaningless. With those words, Solomon started the book of Ecclesiastes, and as we reminded last week, he went on to tell us that the only thing that provides meaning to this life is a life that's lived according to God's commands.
00:00:15
Speaker
One that invests in things that are eternal and make an eternal difference for those around us.
Current Events and End Times
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Speaker
I feel like getting into a sermon like this one today, it would be inappropriate to do it without speaking a little bit to what's going on in the world around us right now.
00:00:31
Speaker
It's been obviously a crazy couple of days, especially last night as the United States responded to what's going on in the Middle East.
Actions with Eternal Impact
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And typically with that kind of event, something like that happening, warfare of any kind, the questions always come to mind for pastors, people asking their pastor, is this the end?
00:00:50
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Is this it? Is this the big deal? No, it's not. um I promise you that when the day comes where I am confident that that answer is yes, I will be the first one to tell you that the hours are short, the days are short, your time is limited.
00:01:06
Speaker
The hours are short in the sense that you and I only have a little bit of time on this planet. That's what plus's what Solomon was talking about in Ecclesiastes, that here in a moment you you realize your life is gone. It's a mist, it's a vapor.
00:01:20
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And only the things that are done for Christ's kingdom will last. As far as what's
Influence of Voices on Legacy
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going on in the world, I can tell you this. When the time comes, you'll know it because, number one, it says the gospel will preach be preached to the uttermost parts of the earth. We're not there yet.
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We're not there. Every single week, we pray for unreached people groups. That term means nobody's gotten the gospel to them yet. And so if you're ready to meet Jesus and you're all excited about heaven...
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Go find a lost person and talk to them. Take the gospel to the end of the earth. What we are seeing right now is what Jesus talked about in Matthew 24 when he said, for the end of time you will see wars and rumors of wars.
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And if you're seeking peace, it's not going to be found here on this planet. I don't care how many NATOs you form or how many United Nations you form.
Alfred Nobel's Legacy Transformation
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Speaker
i don't care how many peace accords they have. There will never be peace on this earth. It is a direct consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve.
00:02:16
Speaker
This is why we have battles between nations. This is why you can't sit at the dinner table and have a good conversation without a conflict. Human nature is that we we battle about things, big and small.
00:02:27
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I sat with my daughter last night. She came down and had dinner with us. And as we were talking, she confessed. She looked at me and she she does quite often said, Dad, I'm a little scared. which I get. It's not because of her own personal relationship with Jesus Christ. She's got two beautiful little daughters she's thinking about. She's like, Dad, what what does that look like? What does that mean? I said, ah baby, Russia and China ain't neither them when i'm ready to fight a war right now, and it's not it's not that time. I said, here's what you need to do.
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Worry about the things you can control. focus Focus on the things you can control. I disagree. It's not nothing. You can control your choices. You can control your choices about what you do and how you react to the things around you.
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Instead of worrying about what Khomeini's doing in a bunker in Iran, worry about your neighbor who might need you to give them a ah special hand this week because they've got
Lessons from 1 Kings 12 on Legacy
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Speaker
difficulties going in their life. Instead of worrying about what Trump may or may not do, spend time praying for those people in your workplace who need to know Jesus Christ.
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Those are the things you can control. And those are the things that we should be focused on. Those are the things that bring meaning to this life because they provide for the eternal rather than the temporary.
00:03:36
Speaker
That's what Solomon was speaking about. And today, this is the question I want us to be thinking about as we dig into the story. What voices are you listening to that are going to impact your legacy that you will leave?
00:03:49
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What are the voices you're listening to around you? Because voices are important. The people we surround ourselves are or with are important. I mean, if you if you go out and you listen to CNN or MSNBC or Fox News or whoever whoever your person is, if that's the only source of information you're getting, you're going to start to parrot back the behaviors that you see and hear there.
00:04:14
Speaker
the The reason that people get on Facebook and have debates is because they're they're reacting from their perspectives on what's going on in the world. The reason a conservative and a progressive will never see eye to eye is because they refuse to open their ears and their hearts and listen to each other.
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Okay? But the biggest problem, the biggest problem is we aren't listening to God. And we're going to see how important that is as we talk about the impact of the legacy we're going to leave.
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1
Solomon's Compromises and Their Consequences
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Kings 12, if you're on the Chronological Bible, it's page 757. Back in the 19th century, there was a Swedish scientist who looked around him and said, you know what, I want to have a positive impact. I want to do something good.
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So he started looking at the mining industry. and decided he wanted to develop something, a better way to do mining, specifically as explosives were covered, trying to help out and in the mining industry.
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Speaker
And he developed what you and I today know as dynamite. um Very, very acceptive exceptional tool for those who are trying to do mining, digging, obviously, excavating, those kinds of things.
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Speaker
The problem was that men, powerful men, took up on this experiment and began to use it for things like what we're watching this week. Missiles, rockets, bombs, destruction, chaos, warfare.
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One day this young man named Alfred woke up and he read his own obituary in the newspaper. That can be quite shocking. Read the newspaper, read the obituary. was actually his brother who had died and the the newspaper made a mistake and put his obituary in there.
00:05:48
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But the thing that got his attention the most was that as he read, he was described as the merchant of death. And immediately he felt, that's not who I want to be remembered as. That's that's not the legacy I want to leave.
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Speaker
So this year young man spent the rest of his life trying to do his very best and at the end of his life donated his millions and millions of dollars from the patent of dynamite to what we today know as the greatest award for peace there is in the world, the Alfred Nobel Peace Prize.
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Speaker
He said, I don't ah don't want my legacy to be what they describe me to be. I want it to be something entirely different. Some of us here this morning aren't living the legacy that God has given us to live because we're allowing our past to define who we are.
00:06:34
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We're allowing it to hold us back from expressing ourselves and and fulfilling those those promises that God put into us, those talents that he gave us, those kinds
Rehoboam's Mistakes in Leadership
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of things. Others of us, we are inhibited from being who Christ wanted us to be because we're so afraid of what's out there that's unseen, the things we don't know, and so we allow that to keep us and hold us back.
00:06:58
Speaker
And I would argue for many of us, both of those are impacted by the voices we have around us. So 1 Kings 12, we're going to kind of walk through this a little bit, bit by bit, instead of reading the whole passage right off the gate. So verse 6, we'll start there.
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Speaker
It says, then King Rehoboam consulted with the elders who had served his father Solomon when he was alive, asking, how do you advise me to write respond to these people? So the people had come to him, he's just become king, and they're saying to him, hey, can you back off a little bit? Because your father Solomon was really, really harsh on us. He made us work really hard. He taxed us really hard.
00:07:36
Speaker
Can you back off a little bit? Rehoboam replied to them and said... Hold on for three days. Come back and we'll give you an answer. Verse 7, he says, They replied, Today if you will be a servant to this people and serve them, and if you respond to them by speaking kind words to them, they will be your servants forever.
00:07:56
Speaker
But he rejected the advice of the elders who had advised him and consulted with the young men who had grown up with him and attended him. The problem here with this picture is that Rehoboam doesn't like what he's heard, so he goes and he looks for voices that he wants to hear.
00:08:13
Speaker
And that's a problem that many of us experience today in our own walks with the relationship with God, our own general relationship with the Father who's died for us. We look for voices, as Paul wrote in Timothy, voices that scratch our itching ears.
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that tell us the things that we think ought to be that way. You look around us in the church today and the church is filled with people who are sharing and saying and doing things that don't line up with God's word.
00:08:40
Speaker
Going back to Solomon's life, we we remember Solomon was given this divine wisdom and unparalleled opportunity to impact the world around him. Wisest man who ever lived, incredibly rich and wealthy because of his choices,
00:08:54
Speaker
And yet his heart strayed away from God, one compromise at a time. You remember Abraham's covenant? Go all the way back to our chronological reading in the book of Genesis. God comes to Abraham.
00:09:09
Speaker
He says, I'm going to make a great nation out of you. And one of the parts of that covenant was this. I'm going to bless you so that you can be a blessing to the nations around you. The idea was that as God poured his blessings on Israel as they lived out the covenant, that they would in turn have an impact on the pagan nations around them.
00:09:27
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Sadly, what happened is that the pagan nations had more of an impact on Israel than Israel did on them. And it all goes back to the fact that Solomon chose to compromise.
00:09:39
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You see, a good start doesn't guarantee a godly finish. A good start doesn't guarantee a godly finish. We see these kinds of stories quite often in Scripture. We see them
Solomon's Downfall and Adherence to God's Word
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around us many times in the people we know.
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we We get to that place in our relationship where we go, hey God, I want to follow you. I'm going to trust Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. We get saved. We get baptized. We check that off the list. And then slowly we begin to drift because we are not intentional about how we live our lives.
00:10:09
Speaker
And one day we wake up we're going how did I get to this place? How did I get so far removed from what I used to be? I had an opportunity to listen to a man share his testimony recently who talked about it that 70 years old, some of the struggles, some of the sins he had had early, early on in his life, how they were coming back even now to visit him.
00:10:30
Speaker
And he said, it's because I have allowed laziness to keep me from being engaged in God's word, to be intentional about living and following after him. If you remember from Solomon's story, one of the first things he did as the king was he went out and he married Pharaoh's daughter.
00:10:48
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This was a political move entirely. is no No other reason for it. No spiritual benefit to it. Completely a political move that began to start the slow, painful descent of Solomon into sinfulness.
00:11:03
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Four different times in chapter 11 of 1 Kings, four different times there are five really painful words to read. His heart was led astray.
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If you'd asked Solomon before chapter 11, there's no way that Solomon would have ever told you, I'm going to choose anything but God. I am a follower of the one true God, he would have given you that answer. But somewhere along the way, he began to be deceived and he allowed his heart to compromise Deuteronomy 17 I'll just flip over and read it for you very quickly you don't have to follow along unless you just want to but Deuteronomy 17 you might remember this God is talking to the people as they are coming out of Egypt now they're not even a nation yet
00:11:47
Speaker
And he's talking to them. He says, you know what's going to happen? He said, you're going to become a nation. We're going to establish you as a nation. You're going to want a king. I'm going to tell you, you don't want a king, but you're going to insist on a king. so I'm going to give you a king.
00:11:58
Speaker
And this is what's going to happen. Listen what he says. He says in verse 20 of chapter 17. ah Excuse me, verse 14. Excuse me, of chapter 17. He says, when you enter the land your Lord God is giving you, take possession of it, live in it, and say, i will set a king over me like all the nations around me.
00:12:14
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want to stop there for just a second. Guys, stop trying to be something you were created to be. Stop comparing yourself to everybody else around you. Stop trying to do what others are doing if you've not been called to do it yourself.
00:12:30
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Ephesians 2, verse 10, Paul says that God created every single one us with good works that He prepared in advance for us to do. You were created for a mission. You
Timeless Truths for a Meaningful Legacy
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were created for an assignment.
00:12:43
Speaker
And one of the worst things that you can do is sit and compare yourself to everybody else around you and what they are doing or not doing in their life. You realize that Madison Avenue, Hollywood make millions of dollars off of us by telling us how bad we are so that they can offer the solution to how bad we are when we're really not bad?
00:13:03
Speaker
They tell us we're too fat, too slow, too dumb, whatever. Here's one of my pet peeves. I shared it with 8 o'clock service. I cannot stand these Facebook ads that come up and go, how to lose 40 pounds in five seconds because the secret to this answer has been discovered. And i'm going to go then why are you keeping it a secret?
00:13:20
Speaker
If you know how I can go to sleep and wake up 30 pounds lighter, you owe me. You need to tell me this information, right? Anybody else feel that pain? So let me ask you something.
00:13:31
Speaker
You and I hold the key to no anxiety for the people in this world, and yet we don't talk about it. It's like we're saying, we got a secret. If you'll watch this 30-minute video, we'll let you have the solution. If you'll pay $29.95, you can have it. No, we don't even say that. We just say, I've got a secret.
00:13:49
Speaker
I'm covered. You can take care of yourself.
00:13:54
Speaker
Guys, the solution to what we're looking for in this world is not peace that can be brought by ending wars. The solution we're looking for is peace that is contentment and who God created us to be and what he gave us as an assignment to do.
00:14:10
Speaker
i I can't tell you how many times I've had people walk up to and go, I don't know how you do that preaching thing. Can I just tell you it's because I wasn't the one who picked it. God picked me. when god When God first spoke to me about pastoring, I tried to run as fast and as far as I could in the other direction.
00:14:26
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Me and Jonah. and The only difference between me and Jonah is I didn't have to have a big fish to bring me back home. Thank God. I ran because this isn't what I wanted to do with my life.
00:14:38
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that The world had all kinds of other flashy little answers. But when I got down to seriousness because people spoke truth into my life and started looking, I was like, okay, here we go.
00:14:50
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Because this is going to happen. It's going to be you, God. It's going to be you.
00:14:56
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Let me keep reading. It says in verse 16, after you've appointed kings, it says, however, he must not acquire many horses for himself or send the people back to Egypt to acquire many horses.
00:15:11
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By the time Solomon died, he had 1,400 chariots, 21,000 horsemen, and horses. guess where he got most of them Egypt. A direct contradiction to God's command. It goes on and gets worse.
00:15:26
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It says, he must not acquire many wives for himself. You've heard it for the last three weeks. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines to fill in those gaps where he had free time.
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Okay?
00:15:45
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Verse 17 continues. It says, He must not acquire very large amounts of silver and gold for himself. It says in the scripture that silver was so plentiful it was like stones in Jerusalem.
00:15:57
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Now, those three things are bad enough, but catch the fourth one because this is where it hits home for you and I.
00:16:04
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It says in verse 18, when he, the king, is seated on his royal throne, he is to write a copy of this instruction, the law, for himself on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priest.
00:16:17
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It is to remain with him and he is to read from it all the days of his life. Solomon failed because Solomon gave up on God's word.
00:16:30
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Solomon failed because he forgot to put that instruction into his life every single day. Write it down, read it, do it. That's
Contrasting Arrogance with Wisdom
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the simple solution to how you and I are going to make an impact in this world.
00:16:43
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By living by a timeless, changeless truth. I don't care who writes the latest bestseller. I don't care who has the greatest talk show. I don't care how many podcast feeds the person has. It's only God's word that changes this world and leaves the right kind of legacy.
00:17:00
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and gives meaning to our lives. You see, when you get to near your life, you're 75, 80 years, however long you're blessed to live on this planet, nobody's going to care how many promotions you had.
00:17:12
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Nobody's going to care about how many dollars you made, how many trophies you brought home. Nobody's going to care how many of your kids brought home cheap plastic rings from tournaments over the weekend.
00:17:24
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Nobody's going to care how many times your daughter danced in recitals. Nobody's going to care about anything except for the way that you pointed them to Jesus because that's going to change their eternity just like it changes yours.
00:17:41
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Solomon stopped listening God and he started following his heart. You ever heard that phrase? Turn on the radio, listen to some self-help show, read a self-help book from a bookstore.
00:17:53
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It's going to tell you, follow your heart, right? You know who's the biggest proponent of this? Disney. see Well, that might be the same same thing, sorry.
00:18:06
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Yeah, think about how many times you've heard those songs or heard those stories. The princess is struggling and some magical something appears and goes, just follow your heart. you know what the Bible tells us about the heart?
00:18:18
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Jeremiah 17, 9. It is deceitful above everything else. God is screaming at us through the prophet Jeremiah that says, don't follow your heart because it's sinful.
00:18:31
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Don't follow your heart. It will deceive you and it will take you down the wrong path. My friend Jay Strother just about a year or so ago and a pastor, he preached at Brentwood Baptist said this. I thought it was powerful. He said, the phrase follow your heart has ended more marriages, mutilated more bodies, destroyed more souls and ended more lives than the enemy ever imagined.
00:18:53
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It is hell's most effective slogan yet. If only you would follow your heart. It's exactly what Solomon did.
00:19:05
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And we might ask the question, in the Solomon, how could you do this? I mean, God appeared to you in visions. He promised to bless you. He promised he would provide for you. He made a covenant with your dad. How in the world can you do that? The question could be asked of us. Because you see, the covenant, the covenant he gave to David wasn't very much unlike the covenant that we were given through Jesus Christ.
00:19:28
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The same covenant, if you'll just follow my commands and trust me, you will be given eternal life. You will be given purpose in this life, but you will be given eternity with your Father. You'll be forgiven of your sins.
00:19:39
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And yet we worship at the altar of sexuality.
00:19:43
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ah We may not have 700 wives and 300 concubines, but we celebrate things that represent sexuality in this world in ways that disgust the Father.
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We offer our children as sacrifices to the culture. Allow our children to follow their hearts, which leads to surgeries, medical treatments.
00:20:10
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Can't get a tattoo, but you can have a sex change.
00:20:15
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We have allowed the world to deceive us step by step, moment by moment, and the problem is that the issue exists in the church just as strongly as it does in the world.
00:20:31
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Why? Because we have forgotten God's Word.
00:20:37
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We've forgotten what that Word does for us. We've forgotten how the Word can change our lives. Indeed, it will change your life. As we've been reading chronologically through this Bible, it's encouraged my heart, but it's also shocking a little bit the number of times I've had people walk up to me and go, I didn't even know that was in the Bible.
00:20:59
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Didn't even know that story was there. Never heard that verse before. Which is awesome, right? we're we're uncovering We're discovering it, right? That's why we're reading together. Because the more your heart is exposed to God's word, the more God's word changes your heart.
00:21:16
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And so we're trying to put it out there. We're trying to, as a church, as a family, engage and encourage and and hold each other accountable. But I'm shocked at people who've been in church all their lives going, I didn't even know that story was in the Bible. Right?
Discerning Godly Counsel
00:21:30
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I've never done this before.
00:21:37
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Solomon's downfall wasn't an accident. It was the fruit of listening to wrong voices. I would argue a thousand women in your life will do that to you. um That's why only have one, baby.
00:21:54
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But that brings us to the story today, and that's his son, Roabon.
00:22:00
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And Rehoboam is a reminder that the voices you listen to determine your legacy.
00:22:06
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You see, Rehoboam had a really tough assignment. He stepped in as the king of a nation that was on the verge of civil war. His dad had done so good and had done so well for a little bit of time that he had built up a pretty good empire that he was handing his son.
00:22:23
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But as we read on further in 1 Kings chapter 12, want you to notice what happens next.
00:22:33
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It said that he ignored the wisdom of the elders and he went and sought out his buddies, his friends who were his age. And in verse 19, we pick up the story and it says... What message do you advise that we send back to this people who said to me, lighten the yoke your father put on us?
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Then the young man who had grown up with him told him, this is what you should say to this people who said to you, your father made our yoke heavy, but you make it lighter on us. This is what you should tell them.
00:23:00
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My little finger is thicker than my father's waist, which I have no idea what in the world that's supposed to mean. I'm not even sure the Hebrew could clarify that for us, but it means something like I'm bigger and badder than my dad is.
00:23:14
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Okay? This is what you should tell them. My little finger is thicker than my father's waist. Although my father burdened you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with barbed whips.
00:23:29
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So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day as the king had ordered, return to me on the third day. Then the king answered the people harshly.
00:23:40
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He rejected the advice the elders had given him and spoke to them according to the young men's advice. My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with barbed whips.
00:23:53
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The king did not listen to the people because this turn of events came from the Lord to carry out his word. These people come and beg for mercy.
00:24:05
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And so Rehoboam does what a good king should do. He looks for wisdom. Proverbs tells us that plans fail for lack of counsel. He goes to these older, wiser, experienced guys and says, hey, tell me what you think. And listen to the words of what they say to him.
00:24:19
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Serve the people and they will serve you for the rest of your life. Demonstrate for them what you want from them. Give them the right example.
00:24:31
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Who is the greatest servant who ever lived? The Lord Jesus Christ, who said, I didn't come to be a master over everyone, I came to be a servant. And in doing so, demonstrated for us what true servanthood really looks like.
00:24:46
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His young friends, however, said, nah, get tough, show them who's boss. Put them in their place. And Rehoboam chooses pride over humility. And that choice in three days undoes what it took 80 years to build.
00:25:03
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In three days, it's all gone. If Rehoboam had only listened to his dad who wrote the words in Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1, a harsh answer, a general answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath.
00:25:19
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If only he would listen to the wisdom of those old men, he could have rewritten history in the right way and left a much better legacy. Now, I've talked about this before in in services, and you've probably heard this, many of you, but I want to make sure we do this again because many times the question is, okay, how do I know which voice to listen to?
00:25:38
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How do I know the right voice? How do I know where the wisdom is coming from? So let me take you back to four simple things that help you to determine what is godly counsel and what is not. Number one is the scripture.
00:25:52
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It's always scripture. Look at the person next to you and say, it's always about the book, dummy. found the county so Sorry, you shouldn't have said the dummy part. But it is important.
00:26:03
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it is It's always about the book. If you want good answers to life, if you're struggling where you are, go back to the book. It is timeless, changeless truth that endures for eternity.
00:26:17
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And here's the important aspect of that. If someone tells you something that contradicts the Word of God, it is wrong. It's not, do we need to dig a little deeper?
00:26:28
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It's not, do we need to go back to the Hebrew and Greek and try to unpack it more and figure out what he really meant to say? The word of God is pure and simple and clear for you and I, and if you're not listening to it, it's because you need to be reminded it's about the book, dummy.
00:26:44
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Read the book. Learn the book. Write it on your heart and be amazed at how your heart's path is simplified. if God says it's good, it's good. If God says it's bad, it's bad.
00:26:58
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That's the first thing. The second thing, of course, is prayer. Prayer. It aligns our will with God's, not God's will with us. You don't go to God to try to change Him. You go to God to be changed.
00:27:13
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Now here's the important thing. When's the best time to pray? Don't say 10.30 night or 9 in the morning. I'm not looking for that kind of time, okay? You need to pray now in the time of peace before the conflict comes.
00:27:28
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Why? Because you want to be able to recognize the voice of the one who's giving you instructions in that time of chaos. I've been married to this beautiful lady on the front row who is my best friend for 18 years almost.
00:27:43
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Those 18 years, we spent a lot of time together and her voice is constantly in my ear. Not always the way I like it, but her voice is always in my ear. Most of the time, cheering me on, loving me, encouraging me, and saying she believes in me. I don't know why she believes in me, but she believes in me.
00:28:02
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And she tells me that over and over again. If I were to be blindfolded and turn around to face the back of this stage and all of you were to begin to talk and that noise, that chaos were to fill the room, I'm about 99.5% sure I could still recognize her voice.
00:28:19
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That's the relationship God desires with you. And the time to seek it is not in the middle of the conflict and the turmoil. It's now. When your life is at peace. When things are going your way, get on your knees every day and say, God, thank you.
00:28:35
Speaker
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now tell me something I need to know for the next part of my journey so I can begin to hear those voices in my head and I can know. Sometimes we get a little confused. For those of you aren't as familiar with praying, when we say God's voice in our head, it's not going to be a booming voice.
00:28:51
Speaker
It's not going to be, thus saith the Lord. It's not going to be that kind of thing. That happens sometimes, but if you read the Bible openly and objectively, be reminded how little that actually happens in the Bible.
Facing Challenges with Faith
00:29:05
Speaker
Most often, God's voice, we use that word, is just a simple nudging in your spirit. It's your conscience, to your Holy Spirit telling you this is the right path. This is the way to choose.
00:29:19
Speaker
Learn to pray. If you don't know how to pray, call John. He'll teach you.
00:29:25
Speaker
Actually, we would be glad to talk with you any of you on our staff just to help you and be encouraged because it's just simply a conversation. And what's so cool about this, catch this, your conversation with God happens because He is desiring it with you.
00:29:41
Speaker
He's waiting on you to talk with him. Third thing, godly people around you. Godly people around you. Bible talks about that. We've talked about godly influences over the last few weeks. Today we're talking about the voices that help you determine your legacy.
00:29:55
Speaker
Surround yourself with godly people. Okay, question is, how do I know if somebody's godly? Here's a hint. If they come up to you and tell you how godly they are, run. They're not. Okay?
00:30:06
Speaker
If people come up to you and run up and say, hey, let me tell you how godly I am, they're probably a televangelist or some false prophet or somebody who has a real bad ego problem. Okay? If you want to find godly people, you don't have to ask.
00:30:19
Speaker
Watch. Watch what they do. Watch who they are. Watch how they love the unlovely around them. Watch how they serve the people in this community. Watch how they treat their wives and their husbands and their children.
00:30:33
Speaker
Watch. Because the evidence is there. The Bible calls it fruit. When you go to a tree that's a fruit tree, you don't have to look for the fruit. It's hanging out there everywhere, right?
00:30:47
Speaker
Unless the tree is dead. if you don't see fruit, go find another tree. It's pretty simple. Lastly, circumstances.
00:30:59
Speaker
Now, let me be real cautious with you because here's where we live in America today. This is the mindset of America. God didn't open the door. Or God did open the door. Or where God closes his door, he... See, you've all heard it, right?
00:31:15
Speaker
That's false teaching. That's false teaching. God... hand-picked David to be the king of Israel, didn't he? What was the first thing he did?
00:31:27
Speaker
He had to go run for his life from the other king who wanted to kill him. That sounds like the door's open there, does it? And definitely not a window being open for him. How about Mary? Do you think Mary was chosen to be the mother of Jesus?
00:31:41
Speaker
Absolutely. An angel comes to verify that information. Do you think Mary had an easy life being a single mother, unmarried, living in Jerusalem, waiting for the time to come? How about Paul? We all love the story of Paul, right? Paul goes all over the Middle East establishing the church of Jesus Christ, planting churches everywhere. His life was so easy. He was stoned, whipped, left for dead.
00:32:04
Speaker
but man Wait a minute. God forgot to open those doors, didn't he? Or how about the life of Jesus himself? Talk about somebody who was on a mission, a mission directly from his father.
00:32:18
Speaker
I guess you and I would probably agree that his life wasn't easy.
00:32:23
Speaker
In fact, here's the truth. Ease is often confused with obedience where in reality we should understand that the right path is most often the hardest path.
00:32:35
Speaker
It's most often the hardest path. Now I'm not asking you to become a masochist and go out and look for pain. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about that when you pray for God's will and He sets you on a path, there quite often is going to be some great resistance to you doing what you're going to do.
00:32:50
Speaker
Right? Okay, so let me keep moving. Because like Rehoboam, the problem really isn't for most of us ignorance. Because a lot of you have read the Bible, a lot of you have grown up in church, a lot of you have heard many sermons.
00:33:03
Speaker
No, the problem isn't ignorance for most of us, it's arrogance. It's arrogance. None of us would ever utter these words, but we read the words from Scripture and go, yeah, that applies to everybody around me but me.
00:33:18
Speaker
Thou shalt not gossip. Yeah, I can't believe Ridley talks like he does. I mean, you would not believe the secret information he shares with everybody.
00:33:30
Speaker
i And you know what? His wife, she's just as bad. I mean, come on, a pastor and his wife that talk as much as they do? Now, I'm not gossiping. I'm just sharing a prayer request.
00:33:44
Speaker
See how easy it is to fall in that trap? hot I don't mean to say anything. I've got one friend in particular. I won't call any names. Okay. Okay. I got one friend in particular who loves to do this.
00:33:57
Speaker
Oh, I probably shouldn't have said that. Well, it's a little too late because you've done thrown it out there for everybody, right? Or, I don't know if I should be telling you this, but, and that's the point where I hold up my hand and go, after the but, I don't care.
00:34:14
Speaker
The problem we've got too many big buts in our church as it is.
00:34:19
Speaker
You following me? I'm not talking about your derriere. I'm talking about, but this, but God's word says this, but God's word says this, but yeah we got too many butts going on in our church.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah. Bless their, yeah. Spoken from a dear saint right there. Bless your heart. So, um yeah, our problem is typically arrogance. We just reject wisdom the same way Rehoboam rejected the wisdom of these older guys who would have set him on an incredible path toward success.
00:34:51
Speaker
His decision shattered the kingdom in two, but it did not shake God's sovereignty. Because the most important part of this story is that even when we are not, God is 100% faithful.
God's Faithfulness Amidst Human Failure
00:35:06
Speaker
100% faithful. Let me skip down to verse 20 of chapter 12. It says, when all Israel had heard that Jeroboam had come back, Jeroboam comes back from Egypt to become the king of the northern kingdom, they summoned him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. No one followed the house of David except the tribe of Judah alone.
00:35:23
Speaker
Remember as we were telling the story, I told you that um David chose Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel when he became king. Really a great selection, a great choice, but the problem was it sat on the border of Benjamin and Judah's territory, the two tribes, Benjamin and Judah.
00:35:41
Speaker
If you remember, Saul was a king out of the tribe of Benjamin. David was a king out of the tribe of Judah. So those two tribes kind of were close. They were close-knit. They were close in proximity.
00:35:52
Speaker
They kind of had their own thing going. Well, the other ten tribes up in the north constantly felt like they were a little left out, kind of like they were, you know, Add-ons to the whole plan, maybe not really inside the covenant the way those two whatever. So there were already some frictional points there between those 10 tribes and the southern tribe.
00:36:12
Speaker
But when Jeroboam comes along and he says, hey, I'll take care of you people. I won't do what Rochaboam has done to you. Boom. The kingdom is split. Israel in the north is formed.
00:36:23
Speaker
Judah and Benjamin remain as the tribe, of the nation of Judah. And God's people are split in half. But look down at this, at verse 24. This is what the Lord says. You are not to march up and fight against your brothers, the Israelites.
00:36:38
Speaker
Each of you return home for this situation is from me. So they listened to the word of the Lord and went back according to the word of the Lord. here's Here's what I want you to understand.
00:36:49
Speaker
Even when the kingdom was split, God still had his plan. And he was still faithful to his plan.
Finding Peace and Purpose in Christ
00:36:57
Speaker
What do I mean by that? God had told David in his covenant with him, I will always allow you to have a heir to the throne who sits on the throne of of Judah.
00:37:09
Speaker
And so as even as the kingdom is split, even as warfare is breaking out, the kingdom is being preserved, preserved not because the guys are that good, but because God is that good.
00:37:21
Speaker
In fact, if you go study the history of Israel, there were 42 kings between the time Saul was anointed and the time that Israel and Judah are both led off into captivity by foreign nations.
00:37:33
Speaker
42 kings and only six of them could be described of having any kind of righteousness at all. and The golden age of Israel was over and this was the beginning of the end.
00:37:47
Speaker
It would be a few hundred years later But eventually Israel would be carried off in captivity and destroyed and wiped away as a nation.
00:37:58
Speaker
Every human king fails. But here's the good news. We're here today because we don't have a human king. We have a king who has never failed.
00:38:11
Speaker
We have a king who is always right, always righteous, always doing what he promised. And his promise to you and I today is still the same. He says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
00:38:29
Speaker
You know, we started this off talking about world events. There may be some of you here today who are really, really under the pressure and anxiety of what's going on in the world. I mean, every time a bomb goes off, you cringe. Every time ah piece of cord falls apart, you you fall apart with it.
00:38:47
Speaker
And that's not what Jesus promises for those who follow him. He says, if you will trust me, if you will obey me, i promise you, I will keep this thing all together for you. Your life will have purpose. It will have meaning. And more important than that, it will have a relationship with my Father for eternity.
00:39:05
Speaker
At the cross on Calvary, Jesus didn't just finish his mission. He finished ours. And he took upon himself the punishment that should have been ours. Last week, I took the opportunity to read a little bit of wisdom from the great philosopher Kenny Chesney.
00:39:23
Speaker
Today, I thought I would read a little bit of philosophy from the great philosopher Rascal Flats.
00:39:31
Speaker
Sprayed my name on a water tower, carved it in an old cottonwood tree. Signed a bunch of high school yearbooks so they wouldn't forget about me. It wasn't until I saw my daddy's name in stone I knew.
00:39:43
Speaker
It ain't a question of if they will, it's how they remember you. Did you stand or did you fall? Build a bridge or build a wall? Hide your love or give it all?
00:39:56
Speaker
What did you do? Did you make them laugh or make them cry? Did you quit or did you try? Live your dreams or let them die? What did you choose? When it all comes down, it ain't if, it's how they will remember you.
00:40:11
Speaker
When you're down to your last dollar, will you give or will you take? When the stiff wind blows the hardest, will you bend or will you break? You're going to leave a legacy no matter what you do.
00:40:22
Speaker
It ain't a question of if they will, it's how they will remember you.
00:40:31
Speaker
The culture grows darker around us.
00:40:35
Speaker
The lives that are going to main the most, the ones that are going to leave the greatest legacy, the ones that are going to change this world are the ones who submit themselves to the authority of the great king, the overcoming king, the one whose a kingdom is eternal.
00:40:53
Speaker
Meaningless. Your 75 plus years without Jesus, that's the word that will describe them. But praise God with the power of His Son and His Holy Spirit It doesn't have to be the description of your life.
00:41:09
Speaker
Will you pray with me?
00:41:12
Speaker
Father, we thank you for truth that changes us, that is timeless, that enables us to find purpose. And this morning, if there's anyone in this room who's struggling, who's looking, who's asking questions, I pray that you would give them a sense of direction and a sense of peace.
00:41:33
Speaker
Anyone here who doesn't know relationship with Jesus Christ is their own personal relationship. I pray that today that could change.
00:41:44
Speaker
That Lord, as we ask this question, what voices are we listening to Help us to be very aware, very self-aware of the voices we're allowing in our head. the ones that are telling us how to live our lives and how to handle our relationships, how to face the challenges that come to us this side of heaven.
00:42:06
Speaker
Lord, we do have a promise of peace, but not peace the way the world understands it. Peace as it's granted through you. So this morning, if anybody here looking for that, I pray that today's the day they find it through this relationship that you offer them.