Sermon Replay Class....October, 26, 2011

Our study this week was 1 Kings 13-14.....reading about kings Rehoboam and Jeroboam.  Both men new God and identified themselves with God, yet both set themselves apart from God....until they were in trouble.  Sounds familiar.  As we read these accounts, it was crucial that we remembered that God is telling us the events through His eyes.                                                             

The passages that stirred the most discussion were 1 Kings 1 - 25 where a man of God was sent to Jeroboam to proclaim that God was angry about idol worship and that God was going to tear down the alter.  Our discussion focused on this man of God who was very disciplined in carrying out God's instructions until he was deceived by another "prophet".  God had instructed that the man was not to eat with the people and he was to leave the land by a different route from where he arrived.  He was following God's instructions until the "prophet" said that an angel had told him to bring the man of God back to his house and feed him.  The man of God then disobeyed God and ate with "prophet" which led to his death as he continued his journey.

There was a sense of sorrow for the man of God in the class because he was deceived and tricked into disobedience and he didn't deliberately intend to do wrong, but the bottom line is that he knew what God had instructed and nothing that happened change those instructions, except for what another had said.  God did not change the instructions; a person did, and that is where the failing was.

We see this same thing in Christians and in the church itself today.  God's instructions found in the Bible are very clear and concise, yet we bend them to accommodate our desires, our understanding, or to please others.  We assume that God's word is open for interpretation and that He will accept our disobedience if we are bending them for a good reason.  Just like the man of God eating with the "prophet", it's hard to see the damage done, yet God saw it as disobedience. If we are wondering why God doesn't seem to blessing us or our church ministries, we may want to look at the disobedience in our daily walks and teachings.  God's instructions are clear and have not been change by God!

Something else that we see over and over in the Old Testament scriptures is that God used people (man of God, prophet sent by God, etc.) to deliver messages but also to be an example to the world.  The people almost always knew that this person was sent by God.  God will put us into situations and people's lives to deliver His word and to be an example, yet I think that far too often we may try to be more pleasing to the people than to God.  We participate in the gossip, we nod acceptance to the unacceptable...we fail to be the
man or woman of God.