Broken Vessels: Prophets, Part IV

Welcome! Today is our final message from the series entitled Broken Vessels. In this series we have studied the lives of a large number of Old Testament Characters, from Adam up to Elisha. Two general observations from this series: First, we have seen a lot of sin. Without fail, people called by God, people for whom God had spectacular plans, have fallen far short of what they were called for. From the absolutely catastrophic sin of Adam, to Noah getting drunk, to the deceptions and favoritism issues of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and on and on – Moses striking the rock in anger, Gideon’s weak “second half,” Saul’s complete abandoning of God, David’s infidelity and murder to cover it up, Solomon’s turning to other gods and the pleasures of this world, and then the long succession of wicked kings in the fractured nations of Israel and Judah, even the prophets failing – for example, Elijah’s meltdown – we have seen a lot of sin.

Now how should we respond? Should we say, everyone sins, so I guess my sin is not that bad? Absolutely not! Romans 1 is clear that sin happens because people choose to suppress the truth that they already know. People choose to not glorify God, and one of the reasons is that they do not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God. Romans 1 says that God responds by “giving them over” to what they desire to do. He gives them over to their foolish thinking and their shameful lusts. And then they do what just comes naturally. So is our sin “not that bad”? Quite the contrary – our sin separates us from God; it severs a tie that God has with us. And the ultimate price for sin is an eternal severance, an eternal separation from God. What, in all creation, in all imagination, could be more serious, more devastating, than this?

Jesus the Vine

Welcome! This morning in a little while we will remember the Lord with the bread and the cup, continuing a practice that Jesus Himself taught His disciples shortly before He was crucified. There are almost countless names and titles for Jesus described in the Bible. Some of these were names He gave Himself. One of these is the Vine. This morning I would like us to spend a little time reflecting on what it means for Jesus to call Himself the vine.

As we have been going through characters of the Old Testament over the past months, I thought it would be appropriate to look at the symbolism of the vine in the Old Testament. These images and scriptural references would be immediately familiar to many of the Jews at the time of Jesus.

Many scriptures refer to the nation of Israel as a vine. One example is Psalm 80, a psalm of Asaph.

Broken Vessels: Prophets, Part III

Welcome! We are coming close to the end of our series entitled Broken Vessels, where we have looked at the lives of a number of Old Testament characters and seen how, far from perfect though they were, God used them to accomplish His purposes. We are in a series-within-a-series on prophets, focusing in on a period in Israel’s history where Elijah, Elisha, and other prophets tried to get wicked kings and people who had forsaken God to return to their Creator, to the One who wanted to be their Savior and Shepherd.

Last week we focused in on the latter half of Elijah’s life, and what we saw wasn’t very pretty. Something happened to Elijah after God’s fire miraculously consumed the altar and offering that he set out in the presence of false prophets and of the people, and after it miraculously began to rain again after more than 3 years of what appears to be total drought. I have two theories about what happened to Elijah – internally, in his head and heart. These are not mutually exclusive – it is possible that both were true, and indeed, this is what I think. It is also possible that neither were true, but I share them so you can consider them.

Broken Vessels: Prophets, Part I

Welcome as we continue in our series entitled Broken Vessels, where we have considered the good, the bad, and the ugly in the lives of people God used, willingly or unwillingly, to serve His purposes in the history of Israel. And the history of Israel is really the history of everyone, as it was through this line that Jesus, the savior of all nations, came into the world.

The titles of the messages for the last several weeks has been Kings, and we have started to progress through the history of the kings the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In Judah, there have been some good kings and some bad kings, but in Israel it has been all bad. Last week we talked about Asa, king of Judah, one of the relatively good kings, although he did not finish well, refusing to seek the Lord in sickness. Today we are going to look at Ahab, an especially rotten king in the line of rotten kings of Israel, and as our title says, we are going to look more deeply at the lives of prophets who lived during these kings. Today we are going to focus on the prophet Elijah. Let’s pick up the story with the introduction of King Ahab in I Kings 16.

Broken Vessels: Kings, Part II

Welcome! Today we continue our series called Broken Vessels, in which we have explored major characters from the Old Testament. The last time, which was two weeks ago, I gave you a handout on the kings of ancient Israel and Judah. We spent our time looking at the first kings of the divided kingdoms, Jeroboam and Rehoboam. Prior to these kings, Israel was a united kingdom under David and then Solomon.

When Solomon died, Rehoboam his son became king. Rehoboam was a weak leader, and the people were not unconditionally in support of him. Two weeks ago we learned how the people of Israel outside Judah demanded that Rehoboam treat them with a light hand. Rehoboam, rejecting the wise counsel of Solomon’s advisors, and instead consulted his own young foolish friends who said he should tell the people that he would be even harsher than his father, much harsher. Foolish Rehoboam took this advice, and the result was that Israel (except for Judah and the tribe of Benjamin) rejected him as king. Jeroboam, a man who was called by God by the prophet Ahijah much like how David was anointed during Saul’s reign, stepped into the power vacuum and became king of Israel, beginning the centuries-long division between Israel and Judah.

Broken Vessels: Kings, Part I

Welcome! Today we continue our series called Broken Vessels, in which we have been learning by example how God uses people, fallible, broken people, to fulfill His good purposes. I want to start with a picture – the picture above. What is wrong with this picture? Take your time looking at it. We will come back to it.

Now, I want to talk about an incident late in Solomon’s life that sets the stage for the next 400 years or so. Fred has taught on Solomon the last few weeks, and we saw how Solomon, when he became old, allowed some of his many wives to turn his heart away from the Lord and towards the false gods that his wives followed, including Ashtoreth, Molech, and Chemosh. He actually built altars on high places and sacrificed offerings to these false gods. This brings us to I Kings 11:9

Broken Vessels: Solomon, Part II

David pretends to capture the city of Rabbah that has already been captured:

Now Joab fought against Rabbah of the sons of Ammon and captured the royal city. Joab sent messengers to David and said, “I have fought against Rabbah, I have even captured the city of waters. “Now therefore, gather the rest of the people together and camp against the city and capture it, or I will capture the city myself and it will be named after me.” So David gathered all the people and went to Rabbah, fought against it and captured it. Then he took the crown of their king from his head; and its weight was a talent of gold, and in it was a precious stone; and it was placed on David’s head. And he brought out the spoil of the city in great amounts. He also brought out the people who were in it, and set them under saws, sharp iron instruments, and iron axes, and made them pass through the brick kiln. And thus he did to all the cities of the sons of Ammon. Then David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.--II Samuel 12:26-31

Broken Vessels: Solomon, Part I

Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba

 
Bathsheba did not get her name from her habit of taking baths.  Her name Bathsheba means “the daughter of an oath”.  Her father’s name was Eliam meaning “people of God”.  Her grandfather’s name was Ahithophel the Gilonite. It is believed that this is the same Ahithophel the Gilonite from the city of Giloh mentioned in II Samuel 15:12. Giloh was one of the cities allotted to the tribe of Judah by Joshua in Joshua 15:51.  For this reason, I believe that she was from the tribe of Judah.

We have no record of how she met and married Uriah the Hittite.  We don’t know that she even knew of David’s scheme to have her husband murdered by the Ammonites.  Furthermore, we have no evidence that would suggest that the Lord would not have worked things out righteously to have David eventually marry this Bathsheba or have some other woman bear David a son that would have resulted in the line of David that would eventually lead to the birth of Jesus Christ so that he could be called son of David. We do know that Jacob (who was later named Israel) prophesied when he blessed Judah before he died saying, “the scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until Shiloh comes.”

Broken Vessels: David, Part III

Welcome! Today we will do the third part of our series on David, a part of our larger series called Broken Vessels, a series where we have looked at how God has used people as part of His larger plan even though they repeatedly sin and fail, and how God has even used these failings into His larger plan.

Last week I left you with a cliffhanger! We were reading in I Samuel 30 how David and his men had just come back to their town, Ziklag, a town deep in Philistine territory, only to find that the town was a smoldering ruin and all the women and children and the few men that had been there were gone! Upon seeing this calamity, the passage says that “David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David’s own wives had been taken – Ahinoam and Abigail; David’s first wife, Michal, if you recall, was now another man’s wife, this all having been arranged by Saul, who was fixed on killing David because of jealousy and his fear of losing the throne to him. 

Broken Vessels: David, Part II

Good morning! Today we are continuing our 3-week mini-series on David, a part of the larger series entitled Broken Vessels, an exploration of the lives of key people in the Old Testament. I mentioned last week that there was no way we could have time to cover everything about David in only 3 weeks, and so this week and next we will do some skipping around.

Last week we went up to the point where David, although distraught and exhausted fleeing from Saul, continues to praise the Lord and follows the Lord’s leading and saves the town of Keilah from the Philistines. There was a powerful lesson for us here – that we too, regardless of our circumstances, should continue giving God worship and praise and also that we too, regardless of our circumstances, should continually seek the Lord and strive to do His will, particularly in terms of helping others. For us this means to keep on being salt and light to people, praying for them, giving them the good news of Jesus Christ, and helping them to grow as new believers. David is a model for us in these things.