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The Danger of a Convenient Faith (Jeroboam’s Warning) · Wetumpka Church of Christ Online

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All righty well, good morning, everyone.
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All right, there we go say man, it's say sometimes you have
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those days, man, that's just a rough crowd to work with today.
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Nice, nice. Well, that's no, that's that's
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that's good. It's good to see everybody.
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All right, well, we're going to talk about a fellow today who is
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definitely one of those those guys that teaches us a lesson
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that I think he probably didn't mean to to teach.
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And it's surprisingly relevant to today, I think.
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And that is going to be Jeroboam.
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So if you want to turn with me to 1st Kings 11, we're going to
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start out here talking about this guy.
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And you know, he's he's one of those guys that I've mentioned,
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you know, several times that or maybe I've mentioned it several
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times in here. When the Bible records stories,
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when the biblical writers would write stories, sometimes they
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would do it maybe with like a comparison in mind.
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And so at the end of Solomon's life, we get some we get some
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ways that his story is told that draw some kind of unflattering
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comparisons with Saul, right. And Rehoboam, same way sometimes
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his way his his story is told, draw some of those unflattering
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comparisons with Saul and Solomon.
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Like they all kind of fit together.
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Now, Solomon and Rehoboam, of course, are, you know, father
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and son. But Saul, you know, he falls
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into the so the trap that sometimes political figures fall
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into with ambition, jealousy, envy, you know, those those
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kinds of things. And and that's I think part of
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part of the problem of power. But but today we're going to
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look at Jeroboam and the problem of creating a convenient
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religion. All right, so 1st and 2nd Kings
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give us a, a lot of insight into leadership and what the pitfalls
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are and sometimes the things that kind of go wrong with it.
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Temptations, right? Temptations that sometimes are
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part of being in a position of power.
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So, so our story, we're going to go to 2nd.
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I'm sorry, First Kings 11. We're going to see that even
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early on, Jeroboam is recognized as being a kind of a talented
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guy. So we all I've I've referred to
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the story of I think I called him.
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I think I called I think I called this prophet another
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name. It's Ahijah is his name.
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He he he appears here at the beginning of Jeroboam's, you
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know, rise to power. And then we'll be there toward
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the end of his life too, kind of comes back in and kind of makes
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a cameo as an as an older, older prophet.
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But this guy, you know, said, you know, comes in with this
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kind of this thing that prophets would sometimes do, kind of like
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this object illustration lesson that they would do where that,
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you know, they would do some kind of strange activity.
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Ezekiel does a lot of these. So Ezekiel's kind of a kind of
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an odd bird. I kind of, I really like him.
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He's one of my favorites actually.
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Maybe, maybe for that reason, he's not he, he's a, he's a
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little bit out outside the box on some things and, and all
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that. So sometimes, sometimes the
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prophets did some did some pretty, pretty odd things.
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And so you know, Jeremiah, you know, he's, but he's probably,
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you know, lies on his side for months at a time.
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The prophecy turns over his other side and lays for months
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to prophecy. So he does these odd things,
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cuts his hair, he burns 1/3 of it, strikes 1/3 of it with the
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sword and scatters 1/3 of it to the wind.
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And you're like, OK, what does this mean, man?
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You know, And so, well, I know this is like, what's going to
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happen to some of the population, right?
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Are going to be a consequence that the nation is going to
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suffer because of their sins. OK, Well, they sins very, very,
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you know, a big deal. And so sometimes they did these
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kind of odd illustrations of things.
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If you're into making miniatures and like little dioramas and
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stuff. Ezekiel does one of those of
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Jerusalem under siege at one point.
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So it's kind of funny, kind of fun.
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But this is one of those one of those moments where prophets
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cloak gets divided into 12 pieces.
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Jeroboam takes 10 pieces. Obviously, this is this does not
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have a practical use. What are you going to do with
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like, you know, 10 twelfths of a garments nothing.
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This isn't part of his message though, and is going to give us
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a sense of what what he's what he's destined for.
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Now The thing is, God makes covenants with people.
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He makes promises to people, and he's going to do the same thing
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with Jeroboam. In fact, he gives Jeroboam kind
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of the same deal that he gave David.
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You just be faithful to me. You'll never lack a man on the
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throne of Israel, right? And that's exactly what he says
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to David. And because of that promise,
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David is always going to have a a descendant on the throne of
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Judah. Now, it does kind of get
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whittled down thanks to Solomon and Rehoboam, but it keeps
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going. It's it, there's only one
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dynasty that's ever in charge of the Southern Kingdom because of
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God's promises to David. Northern Kingdom, not so much.
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So you were going to get a lot of moments, maybe 3 or 4
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different moments where God will make promises to guys and he
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gives him almost the same deal as he does with David.
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If you just stay faithful. That's all I'm asking you to do
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is just be as the nation. You've already agreed to the
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covenant. All I'm asking you to do is just
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hold up your end of the bargain. It's not, you know, hey, you do
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circus tricks and jump through these hoops and do all this
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stuff and you know, go through these extreme measures to please
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me. It's just as a, as a nation.
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You've already made the deal. Just hold up your end of the
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bargain. And they don't do it right.
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And so God makes this deal with several kings in the Northern
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Kingdom. None of them can do it right.
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So Jeroboam is going to be one of those guys, as we as as we
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already know now, he's already listed as somebody who's a
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little bit talented. So first Kings 1127, says the
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man Jeroboam was very able. When Solomon saw that the young
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man was industrious, he gave him charge over all the forced labor
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of the House of Joseph. OK, So he gets a pretty
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high-ranking position in the government.
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This is a talented guy. He's a connected guy, right and
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all that. And so what's going to happen is
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that God is going to tell him go down to verse 38 there if you
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will listen to all that I command you and will walk in my
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ways and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and
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my commandments as David my servant did.
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I will be with you and will build you a sure house as I
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built for David and I will give Israel to you.
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OK, that's it. Just be just we we've made the
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covenant. It's already a done deal.
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It's already been ratified. It's already been in place for
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several hundreds of years. Just keep up your end of the
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deal. You're into the bargain.
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It's all you have to do, right? And then like, we can't do that.
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So, so when you, when you look at this Jeroboam, it's almost
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like he's like a second David because, because God's like, you
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know, hey, I'm going to do this for you just like I did for
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David. Just like David, just like him,
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you're going to get the same package.
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And it doesn't quite work out that way because Jeroboam is
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more of a politician and behaves and thinks and acts in the same
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ways that politicians often do. And I don't say this, you know,
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to the cast, you know, you know, any kind of criticism on all
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politicians. I think it's just the nature of
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the beast where you are when when you are beholden to other
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people, you sort of make concessions and adjustments to
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please your constituency. So now sometimes you do it to
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please yourself, right? That's like they do that all the
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time. But, yeah, I mean, you know, if
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you were to like, take the 10 commandments and enforce it on
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Capitol Hill, I mean, it would just decimate Congress, you
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know. Well, I mean, probably every
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branch of government, to be honest with you.
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But but when you look at what Jeroboam does, he is going to he
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is going to enact some programs that are aimed at keeping him in
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power. I know this shocks you that a
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politician might do this right, but he does.
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He does. And so he he kind of gives his
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justification for this in first Kings 12.
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If you want to turn there with me, it is going to be starting
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in verse 25. All right, starting in verse 25
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of chapter 12, says then Jeroboam built Shechem in the
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Hill Country of Ephraim and lived there and he went out from
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there and built Penuail. And Jeroboam said in his heart,
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which that's maybe a little bit of a problem, right?
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Because the heart is not always firmly committed to God.
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You have to make sure that it does that.
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But he says in his heart, now the Kingdom will turn back to
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the House of David. If this people go up to offer
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sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the
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heart of this people will turn again to their Lord, to
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Rehoboam, King of Judah, and they will kill me and return and
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return to Rehoboam, King of Judah.
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OK, So what we've got here, it seems, is he is insulating
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himself from any potential problems.
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All right, So what he does is he goes and he builds 22 new
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sanctuaries. Let's see, where is that?
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It's the very next verse. OK, so 28.
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So the king took counsel, made two calves of gold, said to the
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people, you have gone up to Jerusalem long enough.
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Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land
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of Egypt. That sounds familiar.
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It should. We're going to talk about that
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in just a second. And then he set one at bait L
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and one the other. He put it Dan.
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Then this thing became a sin for the people went as far as Dan to
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be before 1. He also made temples on high
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places. Remember Deuteronomy specifies
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you only get one, one temple, right?
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You don't get franchises. It's not McDonald's.
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And so he made temples on high places and appointed priests
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from among the all the people who were not of the Levites.
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Jeroboam appointed a feast on the 15th day of the 8th month,
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like the feast that was, like the feast that was in Judah, and
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he offered sacrifices on the altar.
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So he did invade El sacrifice into the calves he had made and
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then yadda yadda, yadda. He does all this other stuff,
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does some some innovations here and all that.
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Now the whole point of this is to make sure that all of the
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people under his rule don't go back to Judah, to Jerusalem.
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And part of that is political survival, right?
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Because he is worried people are going to go back to Judah.
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They're going to offer sacrifices.
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They're going to realize, you know, hey, man, we're not really
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all that different. You know, why, why, why is there
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a brand new Kingdom? You know why, You know, this is
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just the beginning stages of, of him forming his administration,
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right? And So what if the people go
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back home and they start asking questions?
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What if they say, well, why do we need this?
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Why do we need this guy? Why should we be divided?
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You know, we're supposed to be united.
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There's still probably enough people in the Northern Kingdom
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who are, I'll say, conservative right or biblical right, or
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faithful to God who going to still keep going back to Drew
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and well, why are we doing this? Well, he doesn't want any
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dissent, right? And so he creates new places of
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worship, wants to keep people back home because if they say,
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you know what's, you know, why, why do we have all this
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division? Why don't we get back together
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again? He's out of a job.
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Because Rehoboam is the one who is the Davidic king.
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And you've got David, you got Solomon, you got Rehoboam.
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He's the legitimate king. Jeroboam is going to be seen as
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the the fellow who's who's the breakaway, the the usurper, the
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the guy who is creating fraction fractures in the country.
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He's going to be out of a job because that's what you did with
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people like that. You've got competition.
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Well, who has the strongest claim to the throne?
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That's the guy, right? And then you eliminate everyone
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else. So I know we mentioned before
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and here Gideon, Gideon's son, murders all the other sons,
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right? We mentioned that when David
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brings Mephibosheth in, Mephibosheth is probably
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thinking I'm going to die because that's what you did with
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rivals. You killed them.
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And so Jeroboam is in that position.
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He doesn't have the long standing legitimacy of the
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kingship of the throne. And so if the country gets back
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together again, they're going to kill him, right?
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He's out out of a job and out of his life.
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And so that is the that's what prompts him to create all these
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these innovations. Now, it's not a surprise because
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when you look at the ancient world, so like the Cavs, this is
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not an uncommon sights, right. So this little guy here, he's
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probably about four and a half 5 inches tall.
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He's a Canaanite idol statue. And you know, there would have
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been would have been little things like this that were used
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quite frequently. The bull was very popular.
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It's a big animal. It's very strong.
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You know, it's a big part of the economy because they're
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agricultural economy, right? And so very big, very popular.
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You know, it's all over the place.
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So it makes for a popular idol. But then remember, the people
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come out of Egypt and there's all kinds of stuff in Egypt when
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you look at these bullheaded or bovine themed gods.
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So Hathor is 1. She's on the far left there.
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You can see her cow horns. That's a little sun disc in
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between them. But you can see her horns.
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The APIs bull was a representative of one of the
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gods, but it was a very, very, very important animal.
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It was treated like royalty. It was given, you know, the best
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food. It was actually mummified.
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There is a, there was a large underground vault that
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Egyptologists discovered that have has I think it's 20
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something, 2324 of these things that were mummified.
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And they got there. They were like a person.
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They got their own sarcophagus. And of course the sarcophagus is
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like, you know, 15 feet tall and like 25 feet long.
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I mean, they're massive because bulls are big animals.
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And so but they were, but they were treated like royal.
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They were treated like they were divine.
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OK, Medevis is 1. And then Hunnam is another one.
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He's kind of, well, he's he's ram headed, but he's but the one
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next to him is a bull. So, So you've got a lot of this
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kind of imagery that comes up with with Egyptian gods.
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You have to imagine that maybe this is still kind of lingering
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or lurking in God's people, right, because this is kind of
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like going back to very authentic ancient religion.
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Well, this obviously is not does not meet with God's approval.
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So you get the man of God who goes and pays him a visit.
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We all know the story of first Kings 13.
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It's it's parts of it are a little bit puzzling because
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you're this man of God goes and and and as far as that's
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concerned, a lot of prophets, we don't know their names in the
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Bible. They're just called man of God,
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one of the prophets, son of the prophets seer.
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There's several several designations for them.
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And The thing is, you sometimes wonder, well, this is an
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important guy. Why do we not know his name?
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Because we associate that, right?
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We associate importance and you knowing your name.
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So if you ever watched like like American Idol or something like
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that, what my name in lights, you know, but because that's us,
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right? But in the ancient world, in the
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biblical world, prophets, we didn't really always know their
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names. The very first prophet that goes
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and talks to people during the time of the judges is an unnamed
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prophet. Just a man of God goes and talks
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to these guys. And The thing is, I think that
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gives us a message that sends it sends a message to us.
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And that is what when you are a spokesperson for God, the most
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important thing is A the person you represent and B, the message
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you're supposed to deliver. It's not our personal identity,
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right? I know there's in some places
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you have like this almost celebrity status for some
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preachers and Bible teachers and things like that.
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Whether it doesn't really matter where it is, it's all over the
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place and and all all kinds. It's all kinds of churches,
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right? Which makes it even more
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spectacular when one of these guys has a incident of
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immorality that becomes very public, right?
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People, it ruins people's, you know, faith.
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It ruins people's, you know, view of, of the church and of
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preachers when they find one of these guys.
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And there have been some spectacular ones lately.
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I say, like I say like, like last 10 years.
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But that's the problem when when the preacher becomes a
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celebrity, right? And so the individual identity
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of a Bible teacher, preacher, prophet, it's not really that
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important. The most important part of of
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his identity, sometimes her, there's about 6:00 or so
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prophetesses in the Bible. The most important part of that
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person's identity is God, right? It's the person they served.
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It's the person they represent because they are a
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representative of that person. Now, it's pretty easy to go from
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that to Christianity too, by the way.
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So you know one of my favorite Bible verses, Galatians 220, You
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know it's no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.
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Christ becomes a very important part of our identity and if we
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really want to do our jobs as Christians.
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And I and I may have used this. I think I've used this
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illustration in here before. I'll use it again.
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It's kind of like being like a blank, a coin blank, right?
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And then what happens when you stamp that coin?
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Almost invariably it has this, the image of the ruler on the
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front, sometimes maybe on the back, but almost always the face
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of the ruler is on the front. And we're like that coin and
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it's who is our ruler, right? Who, who, who, who do people see
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when they look at us? And for Christians, Christ
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obviously, right sometimes. But if Christ is not your ruler
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and something else is and there's always something else
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that is right, that is not a vacuum something, if it's not
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Jesus, you are giving something else your ultimate allegiance.
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Maybe it's yourself. Maybe like on the front of the
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coin, it's like a mirror, right? But I think for some people it
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might be, but but it could be anything, right?
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And so the, the, the face of that coin is not blank, is it?
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It doesn't stay, but it's, it's whatever you value the most and
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I value the most. And it's always something
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because if it's not Christ, it will be something else.
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But guys like this, you know, their, their identity is the
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person who was sending them. And that's, and that's this guy,
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the man of God. So he goes and he talks to
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Jeroboam and, you know, rebukes him appropriately for all this
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stuff and all that. Now I won't, I won't go too much
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into his story because I really wanted to spend the rest of our
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time looking at what Jeroboam does because he, because what he
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does with religion is not a one time thing.
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It is something that happens. Well, it's happened for the last
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2000 years of church history. So, so, but we'll get, we'll get
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into four major points that I'll, I'll, I'll mention there.
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Now, I mentioned that, that he said he, he said to himself
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within his heart, and I may have mentioned this.
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I'm well, no, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I
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love memes, right? And so one of the ones that I,
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I, I, I've shared probably multiple times that made made me
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think of this passage was was this one.
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So just follow your heart. False heart is deceptive.
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Above all things, follow Jesus, right.
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So if you were a fan of the office TV show, this will have
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particular relevance for you with the old Dwight Schrute
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there, which makes it especially bad if Dwight's rebuking you if
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you were a fan of the TV show. So, but, but anyway, all right,
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so we'll look at at what he's doing here, what Jeroboam's
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doing here and 1st Kings, 25 to 27.
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So again, this is his motivation for why he does this.
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If the people keep going to Jerusalem, they're going to, you
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know, their loyalties are going to go back to Rehoboam and then
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I'm out of a job and the country's going to be unified
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again. So he's trying to hold on to
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power, right. Well, I want to mention
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something here, and that is how to be progressive in four easy
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steps. All right, so this is what
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Jeroboam does. He how he starts out.
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OK, so the first thing that you do, if you want to move beyond
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what God has revealed in Scripture, what you do is you
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just have to be inclusive, right?
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And So what does Jeroboam do? He throws out some some some
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idols. He used some golden calves at
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Dan and Bait L. And he is going to not introduce
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necessarily foreign gods per SE, right?
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He's not, he's not necessarily going to introduce foreign gods.
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He's going to widen the widen the boundaries a little bit,
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right. So when I mentioned that what he
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says about Israel should be familiar to you, Yeah, if you
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remember, in Exodus 32, says so first Kings 1201228, behold your
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gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
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That is suspiciously like what Aaron says to the people after
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they make this golden calf. He says these are your gods, O
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Israel, who brought you up out of the land in Egypt.
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OK, so, so I looked at this and this is not just the English
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translation looks really similar.
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The Hebrew is almost identical. There's only one, I think one
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word difference and what Aaron says and what Jeroboam says in
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the original language. So he is copying him precisely.
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Now the question is, why does he do it or why is he doing this?
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So I had always suspected that this was just Jeroboam maybe
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being historically ignorant and falling into the same trap that
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Aaron did. Some people have a different
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view of that and that is he's actually doing this on purpose
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and saying, hey, you know, Aaron did it so I'm going to do it
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now. He kind of like forgets the part
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that like Moses rebukes him thoroughly for this.
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And not only that, but in the story of Exodus, of course, when
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Moses comes down from the mountain, he's got the tablets
26:14
and Joshua's like, hey, man, there's like some there's like
26:17
some celebration there. There's AI think he says there's
26:20
a sound of war in the camp, I think is what he says.
26:23
And Moses all kind of like poetically, because you do that
26:28
when you want to like really like your language to really hit
26:31
hard. He says something to the effect
26:34
of it's not the sound of VV. It's not the sound of defeat.
26:39
It's the sound of, you know, singing that I hear music that I
26:42
hear celebration. And so, so they go and they find
26:45
this and Moses breaks the tablets right Now, what that
26:50
does is it symbolically shows Israel's breaking the covenant
26:53
that like literally God has just given them these, these
26:55
instructions. They've already broken it,
26:57
right? He's, he's coming down the
26:58
mountain. It's already done.
26:59
So he breaks the tablets and he has to get like, you know, the
27:02
second, the, the, the second pair of tablets to, to replace
27:06
them, but they're already breaking this.
27:09
They're already doing this. And so, but what Jeroboam might
27:14
be doing is he's not just saying, you know, we're not
27:19
going to do the law of Moses anymore.
27:21
He's just saying, I don't know, we're still going to keep, you
27:23
know, we're going to be Moses themed.
27:26
We're just going to kind of broaden it out a little bit,
27:30
right? And so he's he says, these are
27:34
your gods of Israel who brought you up out of Egypt.
27:37
Now there's there's some debates on this.
27:41
Does he mean to have bold gods or is it something like this?
27:49
So there's no mention ever made of a statue of God.
27:54
And that's really interesting because in ancient Israel,
27:58
archaeologists have never found any kind of representation of
28:01
God. I've, I've got an article idea
28:06
that I've wanted to submit to. I don't think Eric's here today,
28:08
but on to apologize press about the archaeology of the second
28:12
commandment. But it's going to be very short
28:15
because there's nothing there. So because because
28:19
archaeologists have never found anything that is indisputably a
28:25
picture of God, they just didn't.
28:27
Now they made pictures of all other kinds of things and all
28:29
other kinds of gods, but not the God of Israel.
28:33
It's very strange that they would, that they would not do
28:35
that. In fact, there's some things
28:38
like for instance, there's a, there's a particular kind of
28:41
thing, an incense stands that would be made out of pottery and
28:46
you would put incense on the top of it and burn it off the top of
28:48
these things. And there's one little panel
28:51
where it would usually have the face of a God on it.
28:53
And there's an example in the Israeli museum in Jerusalem
28:59
where there's just a blank space.
29:01
Well, the, the picture of the God's supposed to go there, but
29:05
there's nothing there, right? They, they just didn't depict
29:08
God for some reason. So you've got these bull calves
29:12
or these bulls. And so is it sort of like a
29:16
pedestal for God? Because here you've got this
29:19
this one particular God here. And his name is Haddad.
29:24
And so if you remember, bin Haddad is a guy that Ahab, you
29:28
know, squabbles with quite a bit.
29:32
There's another guy, Adad Narari, in the Bible.
29:37
His name is basically the same thing.
29:39
So that's that's this guy and he's standing on a bull.
29:42
And sometimes, you know, gods would be depicted doing that
29:44
kind of stuff. And so is this what they're
29:46
doing with God? It doesn't seem that's the case.
29:51
Because if that's the case, like his, I mean, like his heresy
29:54
doesn't seem like it's like bad heresy.
29:56
It's just like mostly bad. But what it does seem to be
29:59
doing is these are representations of God, OK,
30:04
these bulls, that's no bueno, right?
30:08
Absolutely not. And so, So what we've got is
30:14
he's he's being more inclusive, kind of opening things up a
30:17
little bit, broadening those borders a little bit.
30:21
And I think that when we look at popular level religion or
30:25
progressive Christianity, when I say progressive Christianity,
30:29
what I mean specifically is for, for a lot of folks, maybe like
30:34
in the church, we use the term progressive to meet somebody
30:38
who's just a liberal, right? And I, and I don't really like
30:41
using these terms, but you've got somebody who's biblical or
30:44
conservative and somebody who's progressive or liberal, right.
30:48
When I say progressive Christianity, I mean people
30:50
who've totally gone like off like the fringe left who are way
30:54
off the reservation. And, and so that's, I mean, but
30:59
is very popular, very popular today with some folks.
31:02
And so when you do what Jeroboam did and you apply it to
31:06
Christianity, basically what you do is you just sort of open
31:10
things up a little bit, right? You got to broaden those borders
31:13
a little bit. And So what happens?
31:17
Well, if we're going to be more inclusive, then we don't really
31:22
talk about difficult topics very much, right?
31:25
Because that creates friction and tension between people.
31:27
Doctrine divides. And so we just, we just don't
31:31
talk. We just just just a little more
31:34
acceptance, a little more, you know, relaxed view of things.
31:37
You know, you kind of have your truth.
31:39
I have my truth. You look at salvation, it's more
31:43
like we, we sort of redefine terms.
31:45
It's like personal wholeness, right?
31:47
Are you doing OK? Everything good life going OK?
31:50
Salvation is not salvation from sin because we don't like to
31:53
talk about sin because that implies judgement and that
31:56
implies hell. So I so all of that's off the
31:59
table because we want to be more, more inclusive.
32:03
We can't, we can't imagine it's almost, we almost have an
32:07
allergic reaction to the idea that God would hold people
32:11
accountable for poor moral choices, right.
32:14
So we got to be more, got to be more inclusive.
32:20
And The thing is, that in itself is very divisive.
32:23
Yeah. Yeah, All right, Well, again,
32:30
our second of our four easy steps is make religion or
32:35
salvation easy to access. Right.
32:37
So you've got multiple sanctuaries now where?
32:41
If you want to. Hey, man, if you're in the South
32:43
part of the country, you don't have to go all the way to
32:45
Jerusalem. You just go to, it's pretty
32:49
close to the border, you know, So bait L right there.
32:51
I've got the bottom. The line on the arrow on the
32:53
bottom shows you where if you go straight across right to the
32:57
middle of the country, that's where the city is.
33:00
Jerusalem is a little bit farther S from there, but you
33:03
don't got to go as far right. So that's you kind of easing it
33:07
up a little bit. And of course, if you're in the
33:08
top part of the country, Dan is all the way at the top.
33:11
And so in that case, you know, if you're all the way up there,
33:16
well, it's very easy. It's very easy for you now.
33:18
And, and if you're in the middle, I guess now you got
33:20
options, but which which is like this is kind of like the spirit
33:24
of it, right? You get, you get options.
33:26
It makes it easy. And so that is, well, we want,
33:33
we want salvation to be easy. And so again, what do you do?
33:36
Open things up, right? And so you just sort of reduce
33:40
the demands of the Gospel, right?
33:42
If if, if being a Christian, biblically speaking, biblically
33:46
speaking, being a Christian were easy, everybody to do it, you
33:51
know, but it requires us to exercise self-discipline and
33:56
requires us to exercise restraint and defeat temptation
34:00
and try to live lives that are of moral excellence, right?
34:05
And so those aren't easy things. Things that are good and noble
34:10
usually are not very easy. So and So what you do is you
34:15
just, you just sort of take that off the table and you make this
34:18
something that is easy to do. Sermons we don't need, sermons
34:23
tell us that we need to achieve higher standards if because that
34:26
implies that we're not meeting those standards.
34:28
Well, that's very negative. And we don't need sermons about
34:32
all the negative stuff because, you know, life and we want
34:37
positive things. And So what you have are
34:40
therapeutic sermons that make you feel good, make you feel
34:44
like life is great, right? I mean, yeah, yeah, it is.
34:47
But but it almost gives you like a false illusion, like, like a
34:52
false sense of goodness and, and, and, and, and that
34:56
satisfaction. You can invent doctrines that
35:01
will be part of this. And so one thing that I think
35:05
really squarely fits in this is the doctrine of purgatory where,
35:12
you know, there are good people in the world.
35:19
I, I've known people who are very decent, good, hard working,
35:23
very responsible, who are not Christians.
35:28
And So what do you do with that, right.
35:30
And so there was a, when I, when I was in Graduate School, we had
35:35
a, had a professor, his name is Derek Thomas.
35:38
And in the late 90s, if anybody's football, especially
35:41
Kansas, especially Kansas City Chiefs fan Derek Thomas was a,
35:47
one of the most amazing linebackers in like NFL history.
35:51
And somebody had taken a picture of the linebacker and put it on
35:57
this professor's door. And in those days you didn't we,
36:00
I mean, we didn't have Photoshop in the 90s.
36:02
So you xeroxed like a copy of this professor's face and put it
36:07
over the put it on the poster, right.
36:09
And so, and so we got into a discussion because at one point
36:14
Derek Thomas was, he passed away suddenly and he was known as
36:20
somebody who was very charitable, generous, you know,
36:22
good seemed seemed like a good guy.
36:24
And I remember there's, there's a fellow who lived in the in the
36:29
suites and, you know, across the way from me.
36:32
And he said, oh, yeah, this guy's a Christian.
36:35
Yeah, yeah. You, you, you know, something
36:37
like that is, is, is, is going to heaven.
36:39
And the professor Derrick Thomas, who was there, he said
36:43
you have to be careful by making those kinds of evaluations.
36:46
You don't know what's in a person's heart.
36:48
You don't know about what they you you, you you could live a
36:52
life of spectacular goodness and it all be a facade right And in
37:02
time over the next few months as it came out, there were some
37:06
very deeply concerning things about this guy's behavior that
37:10
if you were to just focus on that you would say, Oh no, this
37:13
this is pretty definitive clue. We have proof that this guy
37:15
absolutely could not have been a Christian if you just discounted
37:18
all the good stuff, right? And so, so we, well, we want to
37:24
open things up and we want to open things up for folks like
37:28
that. So what about purgatory?
37:32
What about those people who are on the bubble, right?
37:35
And you're mostly good. Maybe you're not the most
37:39
faithful person. Maybe you didn't really have any
37:41
faith, but you are really good, hard working, decent individual.
37:44
So what happens to you? Well, maybe there's a place
37:48
where you can go where it's not hell, but you just sort of get
37:55
tortured for a while and it kind of burns off all the sands and
37:58
impurities and then it makes you fit for heaven, right.
38:03
So if you've ever, I don't know if anybody in here has ever read
38:06
Dante's Inferno. I read it as a high schooler and
38:10
it was terrifying to me. Then I read purgatory and the
38:15
other ones were not as exciting. The the the last one where he
38:19
goes to heaven is very is very boring.
38:23
And I hate to say that, I hate to say that, but but there was,
38:27
there was a scholar one time who said, you know, but it kind of
38:29
fits because, you know, you can think of unbelievably creative
38:34
ways to torture people, but you know, there's only so many ways
38:38
you can describe eternal blessedness.
38:41
And so that's kind of what that was.
38:44
But you know, reading through purgatory, I mean, it had a lot
38:46
of creative punishments in there too.
38:48
But at the very end, what he does is he kind of goes through
38:51
this place and he sort of has his impurities burned off.
38:57
And then now he's going to go take his tour of heaven in the
39:00
third part of this. And so, you know, this, we, we,
39:05
we can chart where this came up. It comes up about the 6-7
39:07
hundreds is when this gets, well, it was sort of suggested
39:12
in the five hundreds, 6-7 hundreds, there's a Pope who
39:15
comes along who, who kind of enshrines it a little bit and
39:18
then it becomes a developed doctrine.
39:21
But that's that's kind of opening the the door a little
39:24
bit wider for us. Minimizing the importance of
39:28
baptism would be one way of doing this, right?
39:35
Creating different ways to be baptized or just dispensing with
39:39
it all together. And why have this extra obstacle
39:43
standing in someone's way of going to heaven?
39:46
We'll just sort of get rid of that.
39:51
The next thing we've got, we've got two more very, very quickly.
39:55
The next thing is give greater access to religious leadership.
39:59
OK, so he lets Levites, I'm sorry, non Levites become part
40:03
of the priesthood. He's very forward thinking in
40:06
this, right? Because you can look around at
40:09
the news and this is not a very old story, but you can see it
40:13
today, right? So we've got.
40:18
Sarah Mullally enthroned as first female head of the
40:23
Anglican Church. Really, she's the the Archbishop
40:26
of Canterbury. I think the king really is the
40:28
head of the is the head of the the Church of England, which I
40:32
mean, that's got tons of problems too, if you know what I
40:34
mean. But yeah, thank you.
40:38
Henry the Eighth. But yeah, so you've got, you've
40:42
got some issues with this. So, you know, when it comes to
40:47
leadership in the church, just open it up to whoever, right?
40:52
Even in some places, like, and I'm not trying to pick and I'm
40:57
not trying to condemn, but the Episcopal Church has had a
40:59
problem with this as well by ordaining practicing homosexuals
41:04
as clergy. So that would really be opening
41:08
things up quite a bit if Moses were here, right?
41:11
I mean, wherever his grave is, he's turning in it because, you
41:15
know, this kind of thing would have been absolutely
41:19
unconscionable in ancient Israel, and I think also would
41:23
have been absolutely unacceptable in the early
41:25
church. I mean, just just just
41:27
unthinkable from that standpoint.
41:31
And then the last thing that we'll mention here that he does
41:34
is he just introduces simple innovations, right?
41:40
And there's there's all kinds of there's all kinds of little ways
41:43
to do that. He doesn't do anything radical,
41:45
right? He has this feast day that he
41:47
that he invents. And it's like one that's in
41:49
Judah. It's not totally different.
41:52
It's similar. OK.
41:55
Yeah. Well, they do that something
41:56
similar like that over there, don't they?
41:57
OK. So I don't know, tinkering with
42:01
worship styles, innovations in worship styles and churches, We
42:07
can, if we're not careful, even the average person can do simple
42:14
things and, and, and be influenced by sources.
42:17
If we read other books about the Bible more than we do the Bible,
42:21
right, there are all kind and, and there are all kinds of
42:26
things that you could pick up from from sources.
42:30
When I go to when we go visit Chris's family in Oklahoma City
42:36
over over holidays, we always go to Mardell and on the sail rack,
42:41
there's always these books that, you know, here has here's
42:45
somebody with a with a new vision of something, or here's
42:48
somebody else who has a new interpretation of something.
42:50
And you can usually trace it somewhere to where it, where it
42:54
comes from. And it's usually not the Bible.
42:58
It's usually Bible themed, right?
43:00
It usually looks sort of like the Bible, but it's not totally
43:03
different. Just kind of like, you know,
43:05
keeping the priesthood, but just not not making it, reserving it
43:11
for for Levites redefinition of terms, right?
43:16
We use Christian language or biblical language.
43:18
We just use it in a little bit of a different way.
43:21
So we could say sin, we really mean brokenness, which is not
43:26
the same thing, right? Repentance.
43:30
Well, that's really more like self discovery, right?
43:34
You look at conviction and you know, we can say shame, although
43:40
that's kind of a loaded word. We really don't like that one
43:44
holiness, right? Instead of being someone who is
43:48
imitating the example of God, it just means to live an authentic
43:52
life, right? You got to live life by your
43:55
rules, your, your own kind of personal internal integrity.
43:59
And that's, that's how that might happen.
44:02
Anything that makes Christianity look more like the world.
44:06
And you, you have people who think this is a great thing.
44:11
I knew a person one time who said I'm writing a book and we
44:15
need to get rid of the idea of Christians being holier than
44:19
thou and all this kind of thing. Jordan had the title picked out.
44:21
It was getting your hands dirty in an unclean world.
44:25
And there's different ways you could take that, right?
44:31
Because I don't want to get dirty, right?
44:33
I mean, I'm also like kind of a germaphobe anyway, but that's
44:35
beside the point. But getting dirty in an unclean
44:41
world implies that the unclean world is rubbing off on you in
44:45
some way. You're getting it's dirt.
44:48
That is about as unchristian an idea as you could possibly
44:52
suggest when you look at the New Testament.
44:57
And so another fellow we had a, had an elder in, in Chicago one
45:01
time who his, his view of things was.
45:04
And he, and he sat across the table.
45:05
And I may have mentioned this before, if I have, I'm sorry,
45:08
but he sat across the table from me, from us as we were, as we
45:11
were eating. And he said, we need to be as
45:12
liberal as we can be to get as many souls as we can save.
45:16
And the first thing that I thought was, if that's the case,
45:19
and, and, and this really is you're, you're looking less
45:22
churchy and more worldly, you're not going to be giving anybody a
45:26
reason to leave the world. You're giving them every reason
45:29
to stay there and feel comfortable there, right?
45:31
And so, so those are, those are a few of the things that
45:35
Jeroboam is, is giving for us. He's giving us a blueprint for
45:39
progressive faith and four easy steps that as some of the people
45:43
still follow today, because ultimately what he says is not
45:48
what has God commanded? He asks what will work for me
45:54
and there are a lot of folks in our world who have a Christian
45:56
themed faith that the second question is the most important
46:01
one to them. All right.
46:03
Well, next week we will not, we will not be here the next two
46:06
weeks. We'll be traveling a bit and
46:09
doing some speaking. I'm not sure who will fill in
46:12
for me. I haven't sent out those
46:16
invitations yet, but we'll be back with you in in just a
46:21
little bit. Thank you so much.