Sunday 15th June
Read Psalm 61
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
“Lead to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against my foe.” So says David in this Psalm when he feels down or, as he puts it, his “heart grows faint”. What do you do when you are down? Maybe you have places you go to, or things you turn to, hopefully not to alcohol or drugs which only give a temporary rush and then they are gone.
What does David do? First of all, he prays and asks God to hear him (v1), then he tells God where he feels safest – “I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings” (v4). That’s his comfort zone, quietude in God’s presence, feeling the arms (or wings) of God around him. Then he remembers that God has given him friends who fear or respect God like him. These are the two places we need to seek when our “hearts grow faint” – the quiet place with God and with others who care for us. Read this Psalm when next you feel low and be blessed through David.
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
Monday 1 Kings 11:41-12:20
Solomon’s life is not dwelt upon much following his many foreign wives and involvements in their various gods which tells us a lot about the Holy writer’s feeling about what was worth and what was not in his life. The latter three verses of this chapter are basically saying that, if you are interested, you can read about these things elsewhere – in books no longer available. He concludes with he died and his son Rehoboam succeeded him.
Chapter 12 begins with the inauspicious start of Rehoboam’s reign. When Jeroboam who had been in exile in Egypt heard of Solomon’s death and the start of Rehoboam’s reign he returned and appeared at Shechem with a whole lot of Israelites from the Northern part of the Kingdom to put requirements before Rehoboam. Solomon’s legacy was a people hard put under royal demands such as the forced labour required. Jeroboam as spokesman for the people demanded a respite and Rehoboam said he would give the answer after a time of discussion with his advisors.
He then met with two kinds of advisor, those who were older and had served Solomon for some years and some young guns, ‘buddies’, of Rehoboam. The advice he went with was not the wisdom of the old but the flashy hardship of the young and he told Jeroboam that he wasn’t going to listen to him or the people. The old are not always right but they can weigh the ideas flying around that the young can’t – it is wise to listen. The result of the gathering was a split in the kingdom (v16). The Israelites of the North went off and made Jeroboam their king whilst Rehoboam was left with the towns of Judah. The judgement that God told Solomon about now happened.
Sometimes when bad things happen we try to do a remedial job and that is what Rehoboam set about doing after the split. He was determined not to allow a split in the kingdom and so when he got back to Jerusalem he began to summon the troops to go to war against the Northern tribes (now referred to as Israel) and gathered 180,000 able young men (v21).
However the word of God came to Shemai the prophet, “Say to Rehoboam son of Solomon king of Judah, to all Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, 24 ‘This is what the LORD says: Do not go up to fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Go home, every one of you, for this is my doing.’” (v23,24). Sometimes a split is not to be repaired, is that a hard message? We generally feel that every falling out has to be sorted by summoning others to return but perhaps that is not the way, not even God’s way. God’s judgement on the people was happening and it could not be undone. In some ways we are taken back to Cain and Abel where God told Cain that if he did well he would be accepted but he had to watch out for Satan was at his door. Here, Jeroboam was warned not to go astray and worship other Gods yet we find out that that is precisely what he did as the latter verses of the chapter tells us all about the establishment of his reign.
The song from Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat says “any dream will do” which is precisely what the Bible’s message is not. Jeroboam was scared that if the people still kept to the feasts and worship of Jehovah in Jerusalem he would, in time, lose his kingdom and so he decides to set up golden calves at two places and tells the people that these calves were the gods that saved them from Egypt – a direct lie. The danger we have today is to have faith, but any faith will do. No. The apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians of what the gospel that they received was all about and it was not “any dream will do”.
“Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved,…..what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). A religious faith of sorts but which is not this faith is no gospel at all. Jeroboam’s slippery slope is all too easy to follow but it gives no future hope.
Tuesday 1 Kings 13:1-34
The strange Tale of the Man of God from Judah and Jeroboam’s altar has many parts to it and we could look at them all individually but it is better to be read all at once for it is a tale of what happened to Israel after the split from Judah. The man of God from Judah is nameless – he doesn’t need a name for it is the Word of God of which he is the bearer that is the centre message of the whole story.
Jeroboam has left the faithfulness that was required of him under God and has established his own religious parameters for the country by setting up altars at Bethel and Dan, Bethel being the principle one, where he sacrificed animals to a calf image he declared was the god who had led the people from the past. The man of God from Judah travelled up with his message of future judgement saying that the altar on which Jeroboam was offering would be destroyed by a future King, Josiah, which did happen though 250-300 years in the future. Jeroboam’s intransigence led to a physical sign given him when he stretched out his hand commanding his men to seize the prophet.
The following elements of the story tell of deception (the old prophet), disobedience through accepting an alternative word (the prophet from Judah) and a judgement leading to death. The strange death can have hidden elements of what was going on in the larger scene. Does the lion hint at Jeroboam’s power, the donkey, humility and possibly a pointer towards Jesus Kingship. The fact that the body of the man was not destroyed but buried and would so remain until the time of Josiah who made sure that his bones were not desecrated along with the bones of the false priests of the northern kingdom hints at Jesus coming. (2 Kings 23:15-18).
The old prophet recognised his own deception in preserving the bones of the prophet from Judah showing perhaps that there is hope for apostate people who go down wrong pathways if they return to faithful ways even in their old life.
This chapter reintroduces us to Ahijah the Prophet, the one who met Jeroboam years earlier and told him that God was going to give him 10 tribes of Israel after tearing them away from the house of David under Solomon. When Rehoboam succeeded his father Solomon he vowed to keep a hard control over the people and that gave rise to the tearing of the kingdoms. God warned Jeroboam to watch his ways and to stay faithful but the opposite was what came about.
In this chapter we see a family tragedy, his son Abijah was seriously ill and Jeroboam wanted to hear from Ahijah again but must have known that a meeting with him would have brought up all his disobedience and idolatry and so, not wanting the awkwardness of a meeting, he sent his wife, disguised so as not to appear an emissary of the King. It didn’t work. Ahijah knew who she was and then gave her the blunderbuss judgement from God on her husband and his family.
God was going to raise up another King who would crush Jeroboam and his family, only his son who was ill and was going to die, had a good word spoken about him (v13). Like Solomon, the sacred writer spends no more time on him just telling readers that they can find out more about him in the kingly annals. What a tragedy when an obituary has little good to say about someone who has died. It gives us pause to consider what we are leaving behind for future generations.
We have been told about the reign of Jeroboam who became King of the ten Northern breakaway tribes (often referred to as Israel or Ephraim in the Old Testament), now we are told about Solomon’s son Rehoboam who was left with the two Southern tribes (generally referred to as Judah in the Old Testament).
The southern kingdom referred to as Judah in v22 “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” and we are told about the setting up of other places of worship just as the northern kingdom. There was no great difference in the religious character of the two kingdoms and if we ask where this came from we can only refer to the kingdom of Solomon from which they came. Evil doesn’t spring out of good but is nurtured in falsehood and lack of faithfulness and that was what was endemic in the Old Testament people of Israel. From the time of the Exodus we see God saying, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people!” (Exodus 32:9); in Stephen’s defence in the Book of Acts before his martyrdom he speaks about his accusers, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.”. Being stiff-necked is a metaphor for never turning to hear the truth or see what is the right way to go. Our spiritual ‘necks’ should always be supple to hear the Word of God.
We hear of Rehoboam being stripped of some of the riches of his father by Shishak including gold shields which Rehoboam replaced with bronze ones – what a come-down. Little more is said about Rehoboam’s reign except that he reigned for 17 years and then died leaving the kingdom to his son Abijah (not to be mistaken for Jeroboam’s boy who died in childhood) and that the two kingdoms were at continual strife with each other during his reign.
Abijah comes next but his short reign of three years is accompanied by a similar spiritual departure from obedience to God just as his father and so unlike his great grandfather, David, who is spoken of as a man who did right except in the case of Uriah. As the history of the kings moves on David is often harked back to in revered memory compared to the lives of his descendants.
It is for the sake of David that God does not allow Jerusalem to be conquered or its kings defeated – for now. When we live our lives we ought to think about our children and grandchildren that God would be gracious to them and that our lives will play a part in that prayer.
Like his father he was at war with Jeroboam throughout his life. How terrible it is when family disputes or dislikes continue from generation to generation.
We are introduced to a good king in these verses. Asa became King in the smaller kingdom of Judah following Abijah and he did a cleansing job within the land getting rid of so much of the idolatrous practices which had grown up. He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land, got rid of idols and deposed his grandmother, Maakah, from a position of influence in the land because she had a repulsive image for the worship of Asherah made. Asa had it cut down and burned in the Kidron Valley.
The Hebrew word for repulsive comes from a root meaning to shudder, in modern parlance I suppose it would be akin to people saying “yuck” about certain things or practices. It is notable that departure from faithfulness to God in the Bible seems to come linked with sex and its unnatural practice.
The ‘High Places’ referred to the sites where idolatrous practices were performed and although the central cleansings were sometimes done in the land it is often said that these local places were left. The temple seems to have been restored with some of the precious metal articles that had been dedicated (v15) so overall he did a faithful job. Down the centuries the Churches of people spread around the world have needed similar spiritual cleansings and we have histories of faithful men and women who have attempted to do similar works as Asa in purging the church of things that have more to do with the world than with the Christ of the gospels. Our prayer must always be, “Lord help us and heal us”
