1 Kings, Chapter 15 - When The Gold Is Gone | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] Shalom friends. Welcome back to the Prophets of Israel Daily. This is the book of Kings, chapter 15, brought to you by the land of Israel Network at the land of Israel.com. Yesterday, Jeremy, you left us with an image that was nothing short of heartbreaking. Shishak of Egypt comes up against Jewish alignment, empties the house of Hashem. He takes the treasures. He takes the gold shields King Solomon had made. And [snorts] Raavam, rather than let anyone see what has been lost, has copies made in bronze, hands them to the palace guards, and keeps the ceremony running exactly as before. Same procession, same shields. From a distance, nobody should know. So, chapter 15 opens with a question hanging over. And I think it's one of the great questions of our lives. When the gold is gone, what's left? When the success disappears, when the money disappears, when the reputation, the position, the applause, the image we've built for ourselves is stripped away. Who are we underneath it all? I think we're all thinking about that whole madeoff pyramid scheme that went bust and everyone was killing themselves. Like, when it's all stripped away, who are we underneath it all? Raam's son takes the throne. Ayam, he reigns three years and the Tanakh gives him one sentence of verdict and it is Yasharuda. Straight to the point. Verse three. And his heart was not whole with Hashem as God like the heart of David his father. Shalm whole, undivided. The same root as shalom, the same root as yerushalim. Not his heart was evil, not he served other gods. His heart was not whole. At least part of it was somewhere else. And then comes what may be one of the most beautiful verses in the chapter. For David's sake, Hashem, his God, gave him a lamp in your a lamp. Not because Ayam earned it, but because David did. Ari, I want to stay on that word for just a little bit because there's something inside that people can miss, especially if they don't know the Hebrew. Near nun is a lamp. But those same three letters, they carry a second meaning in Hebrew. Yo says to Israel, neu, break open your fellow ground, plow it, turn over soil that's become hard. So we see that the word has two meanings in different contexts. a lamp and a ground that's being made ready. And I don't think that's a coincidence of vocabulary because what David actually what did he leave his descendants? He didn't leave them a flawless kingdom. This chapter makes that painfully clear. He left them broken ground, a city that had been prepared. He left soil that had been turned, a flame that was burning, something that his children could either cultivate and carry forward or they could neglect. destroy and be lost. And so, every one of us right now, we're standing on ground that somebody else broke open. Every one of us is warming ourselves at a lamp we didn't light. And so, it's not criticism. It's just simply what it means to be a Jew in the world today. We live our inheritance. And the only question that Tanakh ever asks is what we do with it once it's in our hands. >> Right. Right. That's true. That's true. And then Ayam dies and his son takes the throne and the whole atmosphere of the book changes. Verse 11 and Assad did what was right in the eyes of Hashem like David his father. Two generations of drift drifting away from the will of Hashem, from the heart of David and suddenly a king like David again. It's like we can exhale for a moment. There's righteousness back in Jerusalem. And watch what he does. He clears out the cult shrines. He removes the idols his own father made. He walks through the palace and the entire country pulling out the decaying filth that had been rotting there for decades. And then verse 13, and this is where it gets, I think, really personal. and also Maaka his mother. He removed her from being queen mother because she had made an abomination for the Asher, his grandmother. The text calls her his mother the way Hebrew names the the woman who held the throne beside the king, the most powerful woman in the kingdom. Assah strips her of her office, carries her idol down out of the place uh that of of the of the kingship, the the palace, the throne, out of the highest level into the Kedron Valley where the whole nation can see it. And he burns it. And notice precisely what he removes. He removes her from being Gira from the office. The text doesn't say that he harmed her, that he exiled her. He just took away her platform. He burned her idol and he left her a grandmother. And that distinction was really everything. And I think it's the hardest thing in this chapter to really incorporate into our own lives. You know, I'll speak for myself at least. I feel like it is one of the hardest things to incorporate into my life because the idolatry that is genuinely the most difficult to confront is rarely the idolatry out there. It's some hostile nation out there. It's the one that's sitting around your own table. The thing you grew up around, the thing that you came like wrapped inside someone you love. It's like what you're used to. The whole family has just quietly agreed not to really discuss it. And Assad's reform doesn't begin in the streets. It begins in his own house. And it costs him something no political reform ever caused. It costs him a real relationship. And then look where he burns it. Not in the back courtyard. He carries it down into the key drone in full view of the city because Assad is showing the nation that he's serious. This isn't just rhetoric. This isn't reform for other people. His zero tolerance policy begins at home. And nothing gets whitewashed because it is family. Nothing gets excused because confronting is painful. Nothing gets quietly removed out of sight to preserve appearances. If an idol was publicly enthroned, it would be publicly torn down. And that may be the real test of whether we believe what we say we believe. Not what we're willing to condemn out there, but what we are willing to confront when it sits down at our own table. Right? And now this verse uh the the entire chapter just turns on it because after all of that, the shrines, the idols, his own grandmother, the text tells us verse 14, but the high places were not removed. Yet Assad's heart was whole with Hashem all of his days. So let's stop there for a second. The the bamote are still standing. The same bamote, the same shrines that stood under Avyam are still standing. So Assad didn't finish the job by the measure of results. He failed at exactly what his father failed at. And yet the Tanakh tells us yet his heart was shal. It was whole. Same unfinished country, opposite verdict. Ayam had high places and a divided heart and he got three years. Assa had high places and a whole heart and he got 41. I don't think that the difference was ever the bamote. I think the difference was whether the king had made peace with them. And while this cleansing is all happening, the kingdom of Judea is still at war with the kingdom of Israel to the north. And Basha, king of Israel, comes up and fortifies Rama, 5 miles north of Urusim and tells and and the text tells us exactly why. verse 17 uh and and so as to allow no one to go out or come in to Assa, king of Judah, right? A checkpoint on the road to Jerusalem. That's what it is. It's even more than a checkpoint. It feels like there's an a siege element to it. Yurvam's original fear that if his people keep walking south one day their hearts won't come back has now hardened into into stone across the highway. And here Assa king the king with the with a whole heart makes his worst decision. He empties what's left of the temple treasury and the palace treasury sends it north to Ben Khad in Damascus and essentially buys an army. Break your treaty with Basha. He tells Ben bin Khadad and Ben Khad does. Aram strikes the Galilee which causes Bash, king of Israel, to abandon his checkpoint, abandon the siege and the blockade breaks. So it works. It it app it apparently works. It seems militarily at least it works. That on that level it was a wise decision. But draam the book of Chronicles tells us what came next. The prophet Kanani stands in front of Assa and says, "Because you leaned on the king of Aram and not on the on Hashem, your God, the army of Aram has slipped out of your hand." You [snorts] know, Arya, I think that's so important because that is a clear message that's constantly being said by the prophets like because you're relying on other countries and not me, bad things are going to happen. I mean the I would say if to look at Israel today, it's like all we do is rely on other strategic alliances in America, in this administration, and that administration. But I mean, here's the deal. Assad is not a hypocrite. The text just told us his heart was whole all his days. And then this happens. It's like, what's going on here? And it's like, listen, this is real life and people are complex and he's trying to manage the situation for a whole kingdom. And the reality is both are true that Tanakh refuses to just simplify him for us. He is good. He is bad. No, there are parts that are complex about these leaders. And then look at what this this is what happens in his first year when he was young and untested and had nothing. It happens decades in, you know, after a long stretch of faithfulness. It happens when a real threat finally shows up at the border. And that's the pattern. And I think it's the most useful warning in the chapter. The compromise doesn't arrive when you're weak. It arrives when you're established. When you finally build something worth protecting and you have resources you didn't used to have. And reaching for those physical material resources in this world may start to feel more responsible than reaching for Hashem. And so that's when the test can start getting trickier and more subtle because a lot of times fear can disguise itself as like this is very real politique. This is very what this is what needs to be done to be pragmatic. And then compromise can almost sound like wisdom. And so the text closes with his life with this interesting detail. In his old age, he was diseased in his feet. And our sages saw meaning in that. The feet are how a king walks before Hashem. And here we see the king Assass stumbled at the very end of a long faithful walk. And that tells us, I mean, all of us, it's something we should listen to because there is not one year of your life in which the walking is finished. And in other words, it's like the story isn't over until it's over. So keep being strong and courageous all the way until the end. >> That's right. That's right. He he made the pragmatic decision, the the realistic decision as you said, and with all that pragmatism, all that realism, he won the battle against Basha. That's true. But look at what it cost. Because yes, he has fought off Basha's aggression, and Judah survives the northern threat. But the treasury of the house of Hashem has been emptied a second time in three chapters. And this time, no foreign army even had to come and take it. At least Shishak had to invade Yusaleim to empty the temple treasury. Assa opened it himself and carried it north to a gentile king in Damascus. There's no question that God's name was desecrated right there. And perhaps that's what makes the compromise so dangerous is that it worked. Bashad does retreat. He abandons Rama, the fortification he built to choke off Judea and Jerusalem. He he leaves the stones there lying on the ground. And then look at what Assad does with the stones from those ruins. Verse 22. And they carried away the stones of Rama and its timber which Basha had built. And King Assa built with them the Ga of Beyamin and Mitzpah. Every stone quarried for the purpose of sealing off the road to Jerusalem. assaull south and builds into Israelite cities into Gva into Mitzpah, right? Which means the watchtower mitzvah. It's actually beautifully ironic, right? The wall built to lock Jews in becomes the tower used to fortify and protect them in Judea. Okay, then the chapter turns north and shows us what a kingdom looks like without a lamp. Nadav, Yurovam's son, reigns two years. Basha assassinates him at the siege of Givaton, takes the throne and wipes out the entire house of Verroam exactly as a Shilon knight said he would in his prophecy. Now put the two kingdoms side by side because this is the argument I think one of the great arguments of the entire book of kings. Here's how it played out in the northern kingdom. Coup, assassination, extermination. Nine different families were on the throne in 200 years. Nine. And in the southern kingdom, father to son, father to son, father to son for 400 years. >> You know, I think that's a really important thing to point out the difference between the northern tribes and Judea, this the kingdom of David because, you know, if you look, each throne changes hands. It's like insane. In the north, every transfer of power is something someone is taking. Basha strikes down Nadav at this siege and seizes the crown by force. And that's the northern model until it repeats itself over until the kingdom is gone. In the south in Judea, the throne is something a man receives. Avyam didn't exactly deserve it and Assad didn't earn it. It was handed to them because of a promise made to King David generations earlier. And that's the difference between a regime and a covenant. A regime lasts as long as you can hold it. A covenant lasts because someone else is holding it. And that's exactly why we, the people of Israel, are standing here in the land of our fathers. Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and every other empire that ever sent out to erase us is gone. And we, the people of Israel, are back in the land of Israel. >> That's right. The North had the population. They had the territory, the army, everything except a promise. And Judea, well, Judea had a nail. It had a lamp. Friends, right? Shishak carried the gold out of your and Rahavam replaced it with bronze. And I open by asking what was actually left. And I think that this chapter is the answer. The gold was never what kept Yusalem alive. The lamp did. Not wealth, not military strength, not even perfect kings. A covenant, a promise, right? A flame passed from one imperfect generation to the next. Sometimes burning brightly, sometimes barely flickering at all, but never extinguished. And maybe that's the deepest answer to the question we started with. When the gold is gone, what's left? If the covenant is still there, if the lamp is still burning, then everything that actually matters is still there. And so that's what I think we should end it with. We are a generation that came home to an unfinished country. The temple is not rebuilt. The nation is not united. The return is not complete. The bamut in every sense you'd want to read that word are still on some level standing on our hills. And there is a voice, and I'm sure some of you hear it, a voice that whispers, "If this were really redemption, it would look finished by now." And chapter 15 answers with one word. Yet the measure was never whether Assaf finished. The me the measure was whether his heart was shal while he was carrying the stones. The founders of the modern state of Israel didn't come to this malaria and marauder infested land because the numbers worked. They came because their hearts were pointed here. And they picked up whatever stones were in front of them. And they died with the work unfinished. And because of their sacrifice, I get to stand on a hill in Judea tonight and warm my children by a lamp that I didn't light. And that's it. And that's it. We have a lot. We have a lot coming up, my friends. We have to fortify ourselves just for these upcoming chapters. Um, and again, if this journey is speaking to something in you, come walk it with us. Our fellowship gathers live every week from these hills in Judea. Thousands of people from dozens of countries learning together, praying for one another, building something real. It's really part of the unfolding of redemption. [music] Come find out yourself. There's the free trial membership now, which is such an opportunity, such a great thing. Very excited about it. My friends, we'll [music] see you tomorrow for chapter 16 with Jeremy.