Jeroboam

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

David. This summer, we are reading really obscure passages of the Old Testament. How many of you read 1 Kings 12 this morning in your quiet time? You know your line if you raise your hand for that. We are studying hidden figures of the Old Testament. People that we likely gloss over, people that, you know, we're not reading about in our quiet time. We're not, there's not a reading plan in, in you version for these people. They, they are people like, like Jonathan's armor bearer, like Uzzah, like Raya Bohem. They're small players. They're not headliners. They're caught up in a big story, right? story, right? Small players, big story of God moving in particular history. And these accounts orient us to real life. Many of us are small players in a big story, right? That's who we are. And these accounts are for our instruction. And really, what these stories

do is they kind of help snap us back to reality. That we are on a rescue mission from the creator of the universe. That is a story that is bigger than your lifetime. It's a story that's bigger than all of our lifetimes put together. And when we grasp that, when we can really understand both the magnitude of the story and our place in it, we can really change our own perspective. We can see much more. And so this is what we're trying to do in our series, Hidden Figures.

Last week, we studied Rehoboam, who is the son of Solomon. Rehoboam single-handedly divided the nation of Israel. So the king of Israel was this, you know, I mean, it was a kingdom. There were lots of people in it. It was a big deal. And right before Rehoboam became king, his dad was Solomon. And King Solomon over the king of Israel was, I mean, it flourished. It looked probably, it looked like an unstoppable machine, to be perfectly honest. This nation, this kingdom of Israel was moving and shaking. They had just had David as their king. Then they had Solomon as their king. I mean, things were happening. And so when Rehoboam gets the keys and he divides the kingdom, it's a big deal.

We talked about him a lot last week, but he's the ruler of the Southern kingdom. Today, we're going to look at the ruler of the Northern kingdom. So again, split into Solomon's son goes south. a different king goes north, his name is Jeroboam. And we're going to be in 1 Kings 12. And so, if you want to turn there, you are more than welcome to right now. 1 Kings 12, we're going to be in there. We're going to start around the 20s, 26 or so. And because the names are so similar between between Rehoboam and Jeroboam, you know, classic mistake there. I'm only going to refer to Jeroboam as much as possible. And for the other guy, I'm just going to talk about the family of Solomon. Okay. That way it's just a little less confusing. We're talking about Jeroboam today. So we pick up Jeroboam's story. The kingdom of Israel has just divided. They have narrowly escaped a civil war. Okay, so this is a big unraveling. There's a lot going on. But as

Jeroboam takes the throne in the northern kingdom, we really need to grasp two things to get into into his mindset. We really need to grasp these two things. Number one, Jeroboam is walking into a kingship severely inexperienced with authority. Jeroboam has no pedigree, he has no majesty, he is likely ignorant of political strategy or decorum. He didn't even know what decorum is. He's just not, this guy is not a king. He's not from kings. He's not a, there's no royalty in his family, he's not noble. He's never even had servants before, much less armies. The other thing that we need to grasp is that Jeroboam has just received this kingdom that was torn from the royal family, the family of Solomon. Solomon's family had all the pedigree. They had all the wisdom. They had all the political strategy. They knew what decorum was. They knew how to handle themselves in front of foreign ambassadors and officials.

They had everything. Ray Baum was smart, cunning. He was a worthy adversary. And so Jeroboam, just understand, he has all the reasons in the world to be insecure. All the reasons in the world. It's a thing that you and I would do. And I say all this to help us understand what we are about to read. Because as soon as Jeroboam becomes king, this happens. And it's in 1 Kings 12, 26 and 27. And Jeroboam said in his heart, now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord of Jerusalem,

then the heart of this people will turn again to their Lord to Rehoboam, king of Judah. And they will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah. So what we are reading right now is, is Jeroboam's nightmare scenario. Okay? He's full on freaking out. You can feel the panic starting as you're reading this. He's thinking to himself, I'm gonna lose it all to Rehoboam.

People are gonna have to go to Jerusalem to worship. And when they go to Jerusalem to worship, they're gonna see him, they're gonna see the royal family, they're gonna see all the pedigree, all the majesty. They're going to remember how cool he was. He's going to have decorum. I'm still learning what that is. And they're going to leave me. They're going to leave me and worse. They're going to kill me. They're going to see Solomon's family. They're going to know I'm a fraud and they're going to put me to death.

This is Jeroboam's nightmare scenario. And under the spell of that scenario, Jeroboam does something that is 100% completely disastrous. Jeroboam invents a clone religion of the Southern Kingdom. He full on invents a clone religion of the Southern Kingdom. Verse 28, this is what Jeroboam did after he had those thoughts. So the king took counsel, made two calves of gold. He said to the people, you have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your God, so Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. So the first thing he does in setting up kind of this clone religion, right, is that he sets up two golden calves and he builds an origin story within those calves. Because what does he say about it? He didn't just say, hey, these are gods, worship them. No, no, no. These are the gods who brought you up out of Egypt. I know that it's hard to imagine what the exodus out of Egypt meant to these people,

But it would be, so in Christianity, in today, right now, we have a cross-centered religion. We have a resurrection-centered religion, right? So when we talk about the Lord, we're talking about His life, death, burial, and resurrection. The people that are in this time don't have that. They have the Exodus. They have the Feast of Passover. They have all of these, they have the Red Sea dividing. They've got all these attending stories. They celebrate, they're supposed to celebrate the festival every year, they know it, it's part of their national identity. It's who they are. And so for Jared Bolem to do this is brash. And really it should show us how desperate he is. He's saying, look, these are the gods that brought you up out of Egypt. And when he's saying that, he's trying to strike at the deepest nerve he can in these people. And he puts them, he puts these two golden calves in the upper part,

which is Dan, the lower part, which is Bethel. And he says, look, look, look, these guys have been with us since the beginning. Let's worship them. Let's worship them. A few verses later, he sets up temples and priests. And these temples and priests help kind of validate this clone religion. And the third thing, to complete the cloning, he sets up feasts. And I know that, I know we read it, Robin read it exceedingly well. And thank you for that. I wanna just highlight a few parts of those last couple of verses. In verse 32 and 33, I want you to listen to how the writer of the first king says it. He says, Jeroboam appointed a feast on the 15th day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, so cloning, and he offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did in Bethel sacrificing to the calves that he made, and he placed in Bethel The priests of the high places that he had made keeps going in verse 33.

He went up to the altar that he had made in Bethel on the 15th day of the eighth month in the month that he had devised from his own heart. Do you see the theme? Okay. This is made up. This is a clone religion. This is Jeroboam trying to work some political socioeconomic magic. And if I could just dazzle the people long enough, maybe they won't see the man behind the curtain, right? Maybe they'll just worship here and it'll be okay. In order to quiet the nightmares of losing everything, Jeroboam constructs a monstrosity of an entire clone religion complete with temples, priests, and feasts. And this is sin. This is sin on a grand scale. This is sin that is systemic. It is crippling. It is disastrous, and we're gonna see why in a couple of minutes.

But you might be wondering why, like why is this so disastrous? Like why, like what's the harm? In doing this, you know, isn't this close enough to the religion of the south of the southern kingdom? And maybe even somebody who's studying the philosophy of religion, they might say, well, you know He's just offering stability to the nation. He's just giving them what they want. He's helping these people establish a new identity. He's trying to take control of the northern kingdom. And here's bonus. Anytime you want to start a false religion, whether it be Buddhism, scientism, celebrity cult, all you need is an origin story. You need people in places that are holy, and you need special times of the year. You got all those three, man. You got the trifecta on a false religion, okay? So just in case you need to do that, later we can talk, okay? It's not, hopefully after the sermon you will see

that's not a great idea. What I wanna, there's a lot of places to go from here, but what I really wanna focus in on is, you know, Jeremiah, Jeremiah, Jeroboam, excuse me, he created a clone religion, but it all started in Jeroboam's perspective. I really want to highlight that. He created an entire clone religion, and it all started in his head. It is rare in the Old Testament to see verses like we saw in verse 26 and 27, where we get to actually read Jeroboam's thoughts. That's a rare moment in the Old Testament. Doesn't happen a ton.

And especially the mind of somebody doing something like this, it's really rare, But it helps us discern a few things that are really important. It helps us discern that this was not some simple temptation. It wasn't like he saw Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop and he went for it. It wasn't, this is not, this is deliberate. And it's not even something where he was tempted and he's like, okay, that's wrong, but it's not going to hurt anybody. No, no. This is a full, a fully conscious action,

full on with defense, okay? He can defend his actions. He's saying to himself, people's hearts are gonna return to Solomon's family, they're gonna return to all that. And when they go down there, they're gonna see I'm a fraud, they're gonna kill me, so I'll just make them worship here. He had a full on, it was a conscious effort. And he had strong insecurities feeding those defenses.

He puts up a good defense, like I'm gonna die if I don't do this. He convinced himself, do you see this? We need to see this perspective change with Jeroboam. The man convinced himself. Nobody came in a dream, nobody threatened him. Nobody said, well, you know what Jeroboam, if you don't do it, you know, no, no. This is in his mind. This is like jumping to conclusions, like American Ninja Warrior style, okay? This guy's like not just jumping from like here to there. I mean, he's like, you know, climbing up the 10 foot wall and hitting the buzzer. I mean, he is jumping to conclusions big time. His perspective is warped. And I really want you to see it because,

because it's really helpful and I wanna see it this morning. Sin begins in our mind. I know you know that. I know you know that. But it may be helpful just to kind of ruminate on that just a minute that sin runs deep into our perspectives. And this isn't like you're just walking along and you see a temptation, like I'm gonna resist that temptation, just keep going, oh, okay, I've avoided sin. Okay, great. That's not really how that works. I mean, maybe it works occasionally like that, but way more often. Sin runs deep into our perspectives. It tangles the way that we see everything.

It produces a sickness in us where we believe the worst will happen. We don't sort of think it, it's not contingency plan B. No, no, we are full on convinced that the worst is going to happen. And when we are in that mode, when we are convinced that the worst will happen, we do things like we make sure that our co-worker is blamed properly. We make sure that person's blamed properly so that we keep our standing at work. Because in our minds, it's either them or me. We make sure that our friend group views that person lowly. We make sure that they have a low view of that person, whoever that person is, so they don't come in and they don't mess up the friend status that I have. They don't mess up the friend group. They don't change the relationships that I have going on. Because in our minds, what we've done, we warp it and we think, it's either that co-worker

or it's me. It's either that person or it's me. It's either I either have to smear this person's character or I have to lose my friend group. So of course I'm going to smear their character. Why not? This same kind of sickness, this same kind of mentality creates tyrants. Now normally I don't bring out Hitler, but I'm bringing out Hitler today. Can't think Think of a better tyrant. And maybe it's just helpful to say this. Hitler, and you don't need to know much about history to know this is true, Hitler believed that it was up to him to purify humanity. Full on, 100%. You pin Hitler down and you say, why are you doing what you're doing? He says, it's up to me. I've got to purify him. Look at everybody. I've got to make everybody pure. And that if he did not, if he believed this, I mean, I would bet this Delos to Donut that he believed that if he did not extinguish the lesser people, then he would lose power

to them, that humanity would circle the drain without him. In other words, Hitler did not consider himself evil at all, not even a little. He considered himself plagued with a great task. He considered himself a savior. That's exactly what Hitler thought about himself. That's what many, many tyrants believe about themselves. And I'll give it to you. Hitler's an extreme example. But when you and I truly believe that we will lose what we hold most dear, whether that to be a spouse, children, career, health, future that you envision, whatever you hold dear, when that becomes threatened, you and I will go to any length to secure those things, any.

The depth of our sin is unfathomable. It's uncomfortable. It is a sickness that justifies murder, torture, a million other sins, and it glorifies our ability to take control. Jeroboam had that going on. His perspective is fully warped. The sickness is fully set in. He had an invented an entire religion to play his people. And I really, I want you to see this right now.

This is probably the height of irony for Jeroboam, because the irony of Jeroboam's sin is that he already had a promise. A few months before Jeroboam was made king, there was a prophet that visited him that told him all that was going to happen. It said the Lord is going to tear apart the kingdom, is going to give you a kingship. So Jeroboam, months before, knew this was going to happen. And I want to just read you the promise. It's in 1 Kings 11, 37 through 38. It'll be up here.

This is the Lord speaking to Jeroboam through the prophet. See if this sounds familiar. And I will take you and you shall reign over all that your soul desires. This is the Lord God in heaven talking to Jermaine. I'll let it reign over all your soul desires and you shall be king over Israel. And if you will listen to all that I command you, I will walk in my ways and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my, I don't have it down here. Thank you. Statutes. I was like, it's not commandments. Sorry. My statutes, my commandments. You keep my statutes, my commandments. As David, my servant did. I will be with you and I will build you a sure house as I built for David. And I will give Israel to you. What a promise.

What a promise. The promise here is nothing short of salvation. It includes ambition, reign over all that your soul desires. It includes security. I will be with you. It includes legacy. I will build you a sure house. This is a promise par excellence. This, there's nothing that can even touch this thing. And from Jeroboam's perspective, what he knew walking into that kingship, even though he had all those reasons to be insecure, even though he felt dumb, he felt like a fraud. He felt all those things, a hundred percent. He still had this promise.

And even though he had assurances from God almighty, he still felt like he He had to secure all those things for himself. He still felt like he needed to just grab hold and do something different with it, just to make sure it happened the right way. Something changed. Something needed to change in his perspective. Something had changed, but it needed to change back. Jeroboam had salvation right there, and he still ran to sin. And this should help us understand something extremely important that is as unfathomable, as uncomfortable as our sin is to talk about, as easy as it is to get into the mind of a tyrant, right? In sin, as easy as all that is to say that sin runs deep into our perspectives. That's helpful. That's good. That's right. But salvation runs deeper. Sin runs deep. Sin tangles everything. Salvation runs deeper. Salvation untangles the way that you see something. And that takes work.

It's hard. We need, in other words, we need a savior that upends our own perspectives. That's hard work, but that's really, really good. So we need it upended on how we see our spouse, on how we see our work, calling our children, our future, and even the way you see yourself. Salvation runs that deep. It might be helpful to look at it this way, that salvation and sin are kind of the the exact opposite. They have the exact opposite effects. Okay. Salvation has the exact opposite effect of sin. So sin then tangles our mind up, right? Sin tangles our mind up. We have nightmare scenarios, right? We need to control those things. What if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens and we lose sleep and we don't know what to do and we don't know how we're gonna control it and only if we could control it. Only if God would show me the plan, all those things, right?

All those things run through our mind a million miles an hour. We can't control any of them. It tangles our mind up. Salvation frees our mind from those nightmare scenarios to trust the one who is in control of everything. Jeroboam had all those promises given to him In 1 Kings 11, but in 1 Kings 12, what is Jeroboam doing? He is saying in his heart, my nightmare scenario is going to play out and I have to do something.

If you're constantly running the worst case scenario, and that's what's informing every decision that you have, lovingly, I tell you, you are tangled up in sin. You need to get out. You believe that you are playing it safe and you are not. What else does sin do? Sin blinds us. So sin controls, sorry, it blinds us, it clouds our judgment. It leads us to make disastrous decisions. Salvation clarifies between right and wrong. Salvation empowers us and motivates us into obedience and humility. Sin clouds our judgment. We think we're better than we are. We think we're more in a position of control than we are. It blinds us, clouds our judgment. If in the last few years of your life, this is just a good diagnostic way to think about it. If in the last few years of your life, you look back at the last five years or seven years or something, and it is just one wreck after another.

If it is just one failed relationship after another, if it's one failed career after another, and you keep wondering what's wrong with everybody else, there's a common denominator in that story, And it's not everybody else. That's a warning sign for you. For you to be able to look back and go, man, I just can't believe, I can't believe all these people, you know, I had all these really good friends and now they've all rejected me. Like, for all these different reasons, there wasn't just one group that rejected you, it was just all these different reasons. And you just look back in your life, in your legacy is that.

It might be helpful to take a look in the mirror. It could be that you are playing out some scenarios that you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that. Your judgment is clouded. You're blinded. Lastly, or thirdly, sin ruins the promise. Sin ruins the promise with fear and suspicion. You want to ruin a gift? Wonder with suspicion why someone's giving it to you. It's a great way to do it. So for the next anniversary gift, birthday gift you get. Every gift you get, try to play that game and see how fast that present goes bad. I wonder why they're giving this to me. I wonder, are they trying to make up for that thing they did? It can ruin. It can. I mean, that's more than looking it in the mouth. I mean, that's bad. Don't do that. I mean, I say it's a game, but that's a game you lose every time. What does salvation do? Salvation restores the promise. Salvation restores the promise with forgiveness, with redemption.

Salvation restores the promise. We get one last effect, one last exact opposite way that sin and salvation have effects, and we see that in Jeroboam's legacy. So Jeroboam's story kind of stops there. It's bad. I mean, it doesn't end well for him, dies in battle. I don't know. It's not a great story for Jeroboam, right? But I want to go back to what I said before about his clone religion being disastrous. And here's what I mean. So in the Northern Kingdom, okay, just a bit of a history lesson. This is helpful for perspective. In the Northern Kingdom, there are 19 kings, one nine. There are 19 kings. Jeroboam is the first, and there are 18 that follow him, okay? And to be clear, Jeroboam, there's another Jeroboam later. He's called Jeroboam the son of Nabat. Okay, helpful.

For 200 years plus after Jeroboam's reign, there are a total of 18 kings in the Northern Kingdom. First, all of them, all 18, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. It says that in first Kings, it says it in second, it says it for all the Kings. And so and so came up after him and did what was evil inside of the Lord. You know, in Jehu and Jehoram and you know, man, ahem, they all came after Jeroboam son in the back. And they did what was evil inside of the Lord. In 15 instances of those 18 in 15, it says verbatim that so and so became king, did evil. did evil, what was not in the Lord, because he followed the sins of Jeroboam, son of Nabat." It says it specifically 15 times. What a legacy. No other king, no other king is put forward as an example of evil like that. None. And really, that makes Hitler look like child's play. Because Jeroboam's sin didn't just cost him, it cost him generations.

And it cost those generations. Jeroboam, son of Nabat, in the grand history of even Israel's kings, is a blip on the radar. He's one of 19, and yeah, he's the first. Maybe that's a bigger blip than Jehu. But what he did in a legacy is much worse because he established something terrible in the heritage of Israel. And generations suffered spiritual blindness. Generations were kept ignorant of who brought them out of Egypt, of who established them as a people, as a nation, of who gave them their spiritual identity. They were robbed of all of that because Jeroboam ran a nightmare scenario that he couldn't stop. Two hundred years sin kept coming down generation after generation, king after king after king. Until they were finally just wiped out. The northern kingdom reaches its end whenever the nation of Assyria comes in and blows the whole thing up. scenario works the same for you and me. I have a tattoo on my arm, this tattoo. It talks about,

it's Exodus 34 verses 6 and 7. I'm not going to read it, but it's enough to say that the sins of the second half of this says, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. When I show people my tattoo and they questions about it and I talk about generational sin. Most people that are outside of church have no spiritual heritage at all whatsoever they say oh I know exactly what you're talking about because they've seen we've seen a physically abusive parent they don't just hurt themselves they heard generations not just their kids but their kids kids and their kids kids kids They hurt generations of families. You have an addiction to alcohol? It affects just about every close relationship you have. If you have a deep seated insecurity that makes you say, well, you never know, whenever people are lying to you,

you just got to watch out. If that's on repeat in your head, that has polluted every relationship you have. Period, I'm not asking, I'm telling. that has hurt you in ways that you really probably are unaware of. It informs your relationship with your friends, your children, your spouse. It, it evades everything and we sweep it aside. We sweep aside the nightmare scenarios that we follow. We sweep all that stuff aside because we think, Oh, it won't hurt anybody, but it costs generations, especially those close to us. It costs generations. And this is why Jera bones perspective matters. This is why our perspective matters, because it's where it starts. It starts in here. Where does the pyramid scheme scandal begin? It begins in here. Where does the affair begin that destroys the marriage? It begins in here. Where does child abuse start? It starts here. It starts all right here in our perspective.

That's why it matters. And this by itself, like I said, that's just the end of the story. If I'm praying and we're going home right now, that is not good news. That is bad news. That is not fun. That will not help you sleep at night. I promise. Oh my gosh, what a, what perspective do I have, you know, going on? I'm going to hurt those closest to me. I mean, it can be bad, right? I mean, you can kind of freak out on that. Here's the good news. The good news is that salvation works the same way. In fact, it works deeper, right? That's the first half of the verse on my arm, by the way, that just say, you know, like, hey, children's sins are being visited in their fathers. Amen.

The first part is that God extends his faithful love, his hesed love to the thousandth generation. Deeper, deeper, not three or four generations, deeper. Salvation not only affects our future, but others. And when you look at the promise of Jeroboam, When you look at it, it's a beautiful thing in 1 Kings 11 because it covers his ambition, his security, his legacy all in one. And really, it is literally more than Jeroboam could dream of. No exaggeration. Literally more than he could dream of. He doesn't even know what his kids are going to look like. He doesn't know what his grandchildren are going to be like. He has no kind of space for that, doesn't really understand, can't get his mind around But that is the salvation that the Lord God in heaven is throwing at him. It's saying, look, just be in relationship with me. Just do this thing and salvation will come.

And this, all that we read in 1 Kings 11, is only a shadow of the salvation that is offered us in Jesus Christ. Only a shadow. It doesn't compare. What the Lord has waiting for us. And I don't mean palaces or kingdom. It's not quite what I'm talking about on earth. What I'm saying though is that you can't imagine what the good things the Lord has in store for you. You can't. You can't control them either. It's kind of a sticking point. You can't imagine it. On this point, I just want to let Scripture speak. And so what I'm going to do, I'm just going to invite you to close your eyes. You don't have to, I'm just going to say it would be better, I think. I'm just going to read some long form of Ephesians 2 to you. I just want you to hear it. So just let it wash over you as we read, God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us,

even as we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved. and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for He Himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments, express in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace and might reconcile us both to God and one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near. For through him, we both have access in one spirit to the Father.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. May God bless the reading of his word. You can open your eyes. The salvation offered to us washes us. It's not something we get up there and jump up and, you know, see how high we can jump. It washes us. But more than that, it lines up our perspective with Jesus's. When we do that, when we are wrong, we can push aside the nightmare scenario and we can repay with love. We can actually love our enemies because we're not running on those nightmare scenarios. We're not worried about our own insecurity, our own inability. The salvation offered us doesn't just wash us. It motivates us toward obedience. In other words, it gives us the power that goes with that perspective. That's what salvation does.

And lastly, and I think this is just so great, and I can't really even explain it that well, but the salvation offered to us, it makes waves for decades, centuries, millennia. The choices that we make today create generational tides in the future. And I know some of you who are over the age of, I'll say 50, I think the older the better, that you can see this nice, that you can see this better is what I meant, Kerry.

Amen, older the better. What I mean is that you can see this exceedingly well. Just as you get older, what you have seen happen in your own life, you have seen passed on ahead, not even just to your children, but just people that you have mentored, people that you have invested in spiritually. You see the Lord's blessing in your life overflowing into the lives of other people and you see the blessing in their lives overflowing to other people. I know people, like I'm only 44, So I'm like early on that curve, but I've already seen the Lord has already been so kind to show me some of that generational tie that's coming in the future. Some of like the Lord's faithfulness. It's just so good to see. And I can't control it, but I know it affects my children and it will affect my grandchildren in ways that I cannot control or imagine. That's a beautiful surrender.

I want you to think about this. Like, what if one of the kings in the 18 that followed Jeroboam, what if one of them had said, you know what, Jeroboam son of Nebat was an evil man. Lord God in heaven, I want to follow you. First of all, I believe God would have met him in that moment, said, yeah, yes, let's start walking together. Let's do that. Yes. But think of all that would have changed. Generational curses would have stopped.

Not all of them, but a lot of them. The sins of the fathers would have died with them. It wouldn't have been passed on. Now think about your choices today. You're not a king of Israel. Fine. I'll grant you that. But your choices are no less effectual. What about your choices today? What about your choices this week? What about your choices this year? What are they doing? What tide are you creating for the future? I believe that as we continue to move forward, as the churches continue to grow, that it's going to prompt us to think more generationally, instead of just personally. Instead of thinking about what best suits me, we could start thinking about how can our grandchildren be the church in their time. What a great thought. You're thinking about the kingdom that expands well beyond your lifetime.

And you're not caught up in somebody messing with your Netflix queue, or somebody wearing the wrong thing, or you're just not caught up in that stuff because your perspective is different. Why not make a decision today that's going to affect generations? Why not say yes to Jesus and whatever he's asking you to do, whatever that is. The Lord Jesus has a funny way of just asking people to do things that I don't understand. Sometimes people come up to me and they're like, you know, the Lord's been telling me to like talk and so and so, the Lord's been telling me to like do this, make this job change, do this thing. And I'm going, okay, but I have no idea. Like, I don't have a context for that, right? I'm just celebrating what the Lord's doing. I'm like, yes, Lord, okay, let's, I just wanna encourage you, you know, That doesn't sound anti-scripture. So let's kind of walk forward in that.

But what's the Lord calling you to do? And then maybe just think about it. Why not? Why not stop a generational curse in your life? Why not? Why not do that? Is Jesus calling you to confess a sin? Do it. Is He calling you to make a relationship? Right, do it. Is He calling you to just invite your neighbors over and quit ignoring them? Do it. My encouragement to you is we sing today. I'm going to call David up and we're going to have our time of invitation. And I just want you to think it through. I just want you to know what the Lord's asking you to do. And I want you to think about that. If you need to make a decision today, please do. It doesn't have to be like walking an island coming up here. You know, that's fine. I will be up here. I would love to receive you if you need to make a decision. And if you need prayer, if you need help, if you need anything like that, it doesn't

have to be like a big, you know, you can just come up, receive prayer, go sit back down, that's great. What I want you to do though is to say yes to the Lord. Whatever Lord's calling you to do, I want you to say yes to Him. I love you Lord You never fails me All my days I've been held in Your hands The moment that I wake up Till I leave my head I will sing Of goodness God You're my life, You're life in the face I've been so, so good Every breath that I am in I will sing of the goodness of God I love your voice You lead me through the fire In darkest night You close like no other And only as a father, only as a friend I have lived in a good day so far All my life you have been faced That's all I am able Oh I will sing of a good day so far Cause I know you're on it, your goodness is on it now. Check it out today. I just want to end, I want to end with a benediction.

I just want to pray this over from Ephesians 3. So it's a little bit about what we were doing. I just want you to hear this. It says, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all, we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.