Life in the Divided Kingdom

Introduction

I’m sure as good Bible students, you all have one period of Bible history. It’s your favorite section of Scripture to study. For some of us, it may be the New Testament. We are New Testament Christians. We live under that covenant and we’ll be judged by those words. And so we’re New Testament people. And so you may prefer the gospel stories, the life of Christ. Or if you’re a Bible class teacher in the adult class and you like making practical applications, you might prefer the gospels that teach us how to live as Christians in this life. Or if you teach maybe the younger classes or just a proponent of history, you might like the Old Testament. You might like the story of Genesis, the creation and the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob or might be your favorites.

Or you might like the story of David and Solomon, the kings of that period. But I venture to say if we took a survey this morning, and we all got to just honestly answer what’s our favorite section of Scripture? That it probably wouldn’t be the divided kingdom. That’s probably not our favorite section of Scripture. And I would argue it’s probably not our favorite for a couple reasons. Number one is, let’s just be honest, it’s kind of confusing. Unlike the United Kingdom, where we have Saul, David, and Solomon, we’ve got one king at a time, and they reign for a long period of time, and I can remember their names easily. The divided kingdom is far more stressful to study. Because now we’ve got, it’s implied in the name divided, isn’t it?

We’ve got two kingdoms. And we’ve got two sets of kings with hard to pronounce names, and they’re changing at different times, and so it’s harder to track that period of history. But again, if we’re honest, it’s not our favorite period of biblical history, probably, because it’s just a bad time in Israel’s history. Despite the glorious days of Abraham and David and Solomon, it’s now a dark period. You study king after king, year after year, of the people disobeying God. Well, you get a couple rays of sunshine in the southern kingdom with Hezekiah and Josiah and men like him, but the northern tribes, it’s all bad news.

And so we probably don’t like to study it because it’s a bleak period in history, and it’s just this decline until they’re finally taken away into captivity because God’s just had enough of them. And if we’re honest, again, we’ve had enough of them well before God’s had enough of them. But it’s recorded in history. And it’s there for a reason. We’re studying this period, or concluding our study in our auditorium adult class, as we’ve been studying the minor prophets, and as every student in that class can tell you, that nine of those twelve divided prophets prophesied during the period of the divided kingdom. So I thought it would do us well, it’d be a timely lesson to talk about the divided kingdom and some lessons from that.

Because it’s recorded for a reason. It’s not recorded, and let’s please avoid this in our Bible study. It’s not recorded, and really none of the sins of God’s old covenant people are recorded so that we can look down on them. So that we can point the finger and say, I can’t believe Israel would do that. Aren’t they terrible? I’m so much better than they are. That’s not why it was recorded. It was recorded, the negative lessons of history were recorded so that we can look at that and say, I don’t want to do that. Yes, they were bad. Yes, it was terrible they did what they did. But the point is, I don’t want to do that too. I’m in a covenant relationship with God. I’m in the kingdom of God, and I can fall trapped to those same errors of judgment and the same sins.

1. Idolatry, the Sin of the Divided Kingdom

And so let me avoid the destruction that they experienced. And so let’s talk about life in that divided kingdom. And I don’t apologize, but I warn you that this is largely because of this period of history is largely negative. It’s a largely negative lesson. We’re going to talk about three sins, three categories of sins, if you will, that kind of typified that time period. And the lesson is we need to avoid those same kind of sins today. And so let’s look at the errors of life in the divided kingdom. We would have to start here, wouldn’t we? Idolatry. That is the sin of the divided kingdom. It started really with Solomon, the reason for this divided kingdom. And we remember, turn with me before we get to the divided kingdom.

Let’s go all the way back to Exodus, to the giving of the law that should have guided their conduct in the divided kingdom. In Exodus chapter 20, you’ll remember the law was given there at Mount Sinai before they were to go and conquer that land that would become their kingdom eventually. And God gave them a law, and the primary point and foundation of that law is found in Exodus chapter 20, beginning in verse 1, where the Lord says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Let’s pause there. There’s the premise for the rest of these ten commandments. I am your Lord. Everything else springs out of that. We must begin. They should have begun and continued living with that recognition that He is our God.

Verse 3, you shall have no other gods before me. In other words, I’m it. I’m not just your God. I am the God, the only God to you. And you shall not, verse 4, make for yourself any carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that was in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting visiting the iniquity on the of the fathers, on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. Let’s look at the next commandment, verse 7.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold you guiltless, who takes his name in vain. All of those first commandments were built on the premise that God was to be their God, and they were to have no other nobody, no thing else, was to come before God in their minds, in their hearts, and in their lives. But we know as we’ve studied this period, and if we’re studying it right now, that idolatry became the primary reason for their captivity. And those prophets, both minor and major prophets that we’ve looked at, talk about that idolatry. In fact, let’s look, let’s look at one of the major prophets, Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 45 and 46. Isaiah, or God through the prophet Isaiah, not only condemns them of the sin of idolatry, but also speaks of just how ridiculous the concept was of idolatry.

Look with me at how he shows just how foolish it is. Isaiah 45, let’s look beginning in verse 20. Isaiah 45. Assemble yourselves and come, draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations. They have no knowledge, who carry the wood of their carved image, and pray to a God that cannot save. Isaiah will go on a long discussion here of just really how ridiculous idolatry is. You carry the wood. Your God, and we’re putting that in quotation marks, your God, if he needs to move from the living room to the dining room, you have to pick him up and carry him there. Now, how powerful of a God is that? That he can’t even change rooms in the house. You have to pick him up and carry him there.

He cannot save. He can’t move, he can’t save, he can’t affect anything. Skip down to chapter 46 of Isaiah. And let’s pick up in the reading there at verse 3. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been upheld by me from birth, who have been carried from the womb, even to your old age I am he. Even to the gray hairs, I will carry you. I have made and I will bear, even I will carry and will deliver you. You notice the contrast? Your idol, if it needs to move from one room to the other, you have to pick up your God and carry it. But I have carried you. From the day you were born until the day you die, he poetically says, I’ve carried you.

So who is your God, or who is to be your God? To whom, verse 5, still in Isaiah 46, to whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we should be alike. They lavish gold out of the bag and weigh silver in the balance. They hire a goldsmith, and may he make it a God. They prostrate themselves, yes, they worship it. They bear it on the shoulder and carry it. They set it in place and it stands from its place, it shall not move. Though one cries to it, yet it cannot answer, nor save him out of his trouble. So the ridiculous aspect of an idol. Number one is, he says, if it if that God needs to move, you have to pick it up and move it.

God can’t even move. And unlike the true and living God who created you, you actually are the creator of that God. You made it. And so he shows just how foolish the idea of idolatry was. In contrast to the true living God and the true worship to that living God. Well, students of history, we look back at those periods of God’s people being tempted into idolatry, and we might have a couple reactions. Number one is I’m glad we’re not having to worry about that now, and that’s really just not an issue for us, idolatry. And I would agree, in this classical sense, it’s not. Now, idolatry is still practiced in parts of the world, but largely here in America, you’d have to hunt to find a temple where some graven image is, and most of the time, I’m assuming you’re like me.

I’m not tempted to do that, to set up an idol in my house of some graven image and bow down before it because I recognize the foolishness of what Isaiah talked about. But does that mean that in no sense there’s no application, there’s no lesson for us? Absolutely not. Because we recognize that idolatry can take many forms. I am the Lord your God, you’ll have no other gods before me. Still applies today. And it’s still possible for us to put something ahead of God. For us to, if just metaphorically, bow down and worship and serve something else. In our culture in our society today, that might be many things. For some people, the right to choose has become their God. That’s what’s most important. And they hold it as sacred above anything else.

For others, there may be their political and individual rights have become their God. Their freedom and their right to do something is not just a cherished American right, but it’s become our God. The thing that’s most important to us. Jesus and the Apostle Paul would remind us that for so many money, possessions can become our God. In Colossians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul said, covetousness is idolatry. Because that’s become our God. Jesus taught that same thing. Remember in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6 and in verse 24? He said, You cannot, cannot serve God and mammon. That was the Chaldean word for riches. You can’t serve God in wealth. You can’t have two masters. Because you’ll either cling to one, despise the other, or despise the one and cling.

You can’t. You can only have one God. And so the question comes for us as New Testament Christians, is He my Lord and my God. I want us to challenge us to really think about that question. Maybe a question that we’ve too often taken for granted and therefore never really answered. Is he my Lord? We need to make sure that we either in our past or today have a conscious deliberate conversion. Not just a conversion in name only, but a conscious, deliberate conversion. Have you ever just really sat down with yourself and said, I will follow him. Not just that I obeyed the gospel, I was baptized because I didn’t want to go to hell or because that was the thing to do, and I wanted to kind of be the right kind of guy.

2. Insincere Service

And those are all good motives, maybe, but to really sit down and say, I am deciding that he is going to be my God and my Lord, that He will dictate everything that I do. That I will stop and not say what will please me, what will be best for me, what do I want, but to really say, I’m turning all of that over to God. What will please him? What does he want? I fear sometimes we don’t take the time to make that conscious, deliberate conversion that we’re really saying, I’ll have no other God before him. It was Israel’s downfall. And it can be ours. Another sin that they were guilty of that we read about in these minor and major prophets during this life in the divided kingdom was their insincere service.

It seems like, and maybe this is a cynical view of this period of history, but it seems like they were either serving another God who really wasn’t a God, Isaiah said, or they were doing a lousy job of serving the right God. That kind of seemed like the way it was. That even when they would shun the idols of the day and come back to the temple, that they didn’t really come all the way back to the temple. They might come physically back to the temple rather than the temple of idols, but their heart wasn’t fully in it in their service to God. Are you still in the book of Isaiah? Go back a few chapters or a lot of chapters to chapter one. Isaiah chapter one.

And let’s begin our reading in verse 10. Isaiah 1, the 10th verse, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of God, you people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord. I’ve had enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or the lambs of goats. God says, I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of your offerings at the temple. Now it’s not that God didn’t want those. He’s the one that commanded. He came up with it. But we understand what Isaiah is saying. Go ahead and keep reading. Verse 12. When you come to appear before me, who’s required this from your hand to trample my courts?

Bring no more feudal sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, the Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. There’s the key. It wasn’t that God says, I’m growing tired of these sacrifices. Yeah, I know I asked for them, but they’re getting kind of old. That’s not the point. He says, I cannot bear iniquity and your sacrifices. I can’t stand the inconsistency. Now let’s illustrate that. And this is an unpleasant illustration, but it’s the best I can do. Sometimes we give gifts to make up for bad things that we’ve done. And that’s a shame, isn’t it? And personally speaking, it’s a shame, and maybe it’s a designation we’ve earned, but it’s a shame that men can’t give gifts without that being the thought.

If I ever go to the store and buy flowers from Deedra for Deedra, it’s a 90% chance that the cashier is going to make some smart elec comment. Like, uh oh, what did you do? I didn’t do anything. But we’ve got that mentality, and again, maybe it’s earned that we give those gifts to make up for something that we’ve done. But imagine a husband doing that. Imagine a husband maybe being unfaithful to his wife. And every time he’s unfaithful, he brings a dozen roses. What should be a nice, beautiful, fragrant gesture? What’s it going to come to symbolize to that wife? Maybe the first few years of their marriage at Valentine’s anniversary, she loved those roses. Maybe it became, maybe it already was her favorite flower, but it’s quickly going to become a stench, isn’t it?

Because it’s going to be a constant reminder of your behavior. And you’re bringing those things to me because. And that’s what God is saying about the incense. Your incense stinks. Your sacrifices, I can’t even stand to look at them. Why? Because you’re being unfaithful to me. It doesn’t mean anything. And so what did Joel say? Turn over to the prophet Joel, we studied in our study of the minor prophets. When Joel is calling, or God through Joel again, is calling on the people to do better, to repent, to quit going through the motions of just insincerely worshiping God, of insincerely bringing their sacrifices to God. Look what he says in Joel chapter 2. Begin in verse 12. And this is God’s call to us today. Joel 2, verse 12.

Now therefore says the Lord, turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning. So rend your heart and not your garments, says the Lord. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and he relents from doing harm. We know, because we’ve studied the history, biblical history, that the way they would express their emotions, their grief, their sorrow, as many times they would just tear their clothes. God says, don’t tear your clothes. Tear your heart. Don’t just go through that outward shine that you’re serving me, that you’re returning to me, but do it from the inside. Rend your heart, not your garments. And so our challenge is new covenant Christians today. Is our service sincere?

3. They Forsook the Law of God

Are we just coming to the temple and offering our sacrifices? While there’s iniquity in our lives. Are we just, as those in Malachi’s day, just going through the motions? The last sin that we see, and maybe you could argue that it’s the bedrock foundation of all the sins that they committed during this period of time, is they forsook the law of God. That’s so apparent. You remember in Josiah, the reformer’s day? Josiah, and probably motivated by the priest and some other good godly men, Josiah, that young king, issues an order that we need to clean out the temple and get it ready to be used. What a telling sign that is, that it hadn’t even been used. And so they began to clean it out and sweep out the dust and the cobwebs, and they happened to find something there.

And it’s a copy of the law of God. I can picture it covered under those dust and cobwebs back in some forgotten corner, covered up by a punch bowl and glasses and tablecloths. It’s been forgotten, neglected and forsaken. Well, they dust it off and they read it, and Josiah and those other good godly men are horrified. Horrified for two reasons. Number one is that we haven’t been doing that. God wants us to do that. We haven’t been doing that. God doesn’t want us to do that. We do that every day. But also horrified because in that law, it not only gave them conditions that needed to be met, laws that needed to be obeyed, but it says, here’s what I’m going to do if you don’t.

And those wise men knew that’s us. We’re in danger of God’s wrath. And so they set about to fix things. Hosea, one of the prophets we studied, said in chapter 4 and verse 6, my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. They forsook God’s law. Simple as that. Now it manifested itself in a lot of ways. But they forsook the law of God. That can be our downfall as well. We must understand that though we live in a different time and a different covenant and different regulations, that the principles are the same. We’re to have no other God before him. That we’re to be guided by his law. A law that God would say emanates from him’s very self, and when we forsake that law, we are forsaking him.

Conclusion

And we should rend our heart, not our garments, as we turn to him and pray for his forgiveness. It’s not a pleasant period of history to study. But it’s one we need to hear the warnings, so that we do not end our existence here on life by being carried away into captivity. But that we can live in that spiritual land that flows with milk and honey. Would you render obedience to the gospel this morning? Would you do what God has called upon you to do to be one of his children? Would you not forsake his law? Would you be sincere in your coming to him with your whole heart? And would you honor him through a conscious, deliberate conversion this morning? Can we help you to be the type of covenant people God wants you to be?

Then why not let that be known right now as together we stand and sing.