Right now the prayer is done. We're kicking this thing off with lesson five. It's called the divorce of David's Kingdom And I pick the word divorce very intentionally because one of these great resources that I would recommend to you has a great perspective on this I've got the quote here down below but more than a split from David's Kingdom It's a divorce and there's huge typological reasons why that's the case. I want to develop that theme a lot for you So we're looking at chapters 12 through 16 last lesson was all about Solomon's fall from grace There's three fold fall.
It's much more than just his wives and the idolatry It is a three-fold fall where he royally falls He gives in with his royal appetites into the three-fold can keep us and talk about all of that and we talk about the punishment that God gave him through the Prophet Hijah where his kingdom is going to be torn apart and given to another to Jeroboam So let's pick up right where we left off and we're in chapter 12. The time is 930 BC So roughly a thousand years before the public ministry of Christ keep that in mind There's a lot to say it's a totally random, but there's a lot to say about the number thousand years, especially the book revelation and A thousand years is really really important But we're talking right now about a thousand years before the ministry of Christ win the kingdom splits And then when Jesus is going to heal that so without any further ado, let's look at chapter 12 verse 1 and following It says Rea bomb so this okay again is Solomon's son. It's always confusing all these names It's gonna be so much easier if it was like James and Bill and Nick or you know all these names are familiar with but of course They're not and they're very they sound very similar and as we go through this I have a chart for you many I think some kings of the north and the south have the same name It's just you have to really pay attention to this but it's Jeroboam in the north Rea bomb in the south So Rea bomb is Solomon's son so Rea bomb went to Shekam for all Israel had come to Shekam to make him king when Jeroboam the son of the bot heard it For he was still in Egypt whether he had fled from King Solomon then Jeroboam returned from Egypt And they sent and called him and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rea bomb your father made our yokevy Now therefore light in the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke upon us and we will serve you And he said give me three days and I'll get back to you. Okay, so let's stop right there really quickly This is a really interesting moment here in salvation history where the elders of all of this were all the various tribes gathered together In Shekam to say look your father made life extremely difficult and I've been sharing with you over the past couple of lessons We talked about Solomon There's all these speed bumps red flags warning signs whatever you want to call them about how he was Tending towards being a king like all the other nations and we talked about all that was solid back in first and second Samuel But he ended his life basically a tyrant now.
There's a tradition that he converted I don't have a dog in that fight I would like to think that he converted at the end of his life King Solomon I would like to think as in heaven there's a tradition of his conversion but towards the end of his reign It's bad. It was really really bad. He taxed the people heavily He had forced the labor as I shared with you in the construction Not just at the temple remember but he built his own palace in the palace for the Egyptian princess and all of his other projects So heavy heavy taxation forced labor He basically think of him basically as kind of a a Pharaoh figure And that's actually really important because we're gonna see starting in this lesson moving forward into the other five lessons of this course You're gonna have all kinds of Exodus echoes Exodus reversals Exodus illusions direct and indirect They're all over the place and that's really the way to understand this next segment of salvation history Which is a reset button for the Exodus and so Solomon here is like a Pharaoh figure as a tyrant with his taxes with his forest labor and that's no good now All this happens where the elders go up to Raya bone and say okay your father was a tyrant basically and now you need a Light in the yoke you need to lighten the load here And we'll serve you and this all happens in Shechem and Shechem is so interesting for a number of reasons You go back you check out your capital dictionary to see all the various things that happen at Shechem It's where Abraham built his altar when he arrived in the promise land after God called him to travel there Jacob But land there, but they're also very significantly This is where in Shechem the deuteronomic covenant was ratified under the leadership of Joshua Moses said before he died When you get into land ratify the covenant you're gonna Shechem in between his two mountains garrison and eyeball This is where it was ratified and so Shechem is a really beautiful historical significant significant place of the patriarchs worshiping there And the deuteronomic covenant being ratified there the people would become you know renew their commitments and their love of God now Unfortunately the irony is because of Solomon sin as well as Raya bone stupidity clearly wisdom is not an inherited trait Raya bone is an utter idiot because of sin now the people are gonna be split They were united as one people under God with the deuteronomic covenant here at Shechem and in the same place now They're going to be split and it's gonna be even uglier when Jeroboin becomes a new king We're gonna go through all of that and his apostasy here really soon So check into significant place and this all happens there now What happened in terms of the response you Raya bones is give me three days and come back again in the meantime Let's go read on in verse six here Raya bones to counsel with the old men who had stood before Solomon his father while he was Yet alive saying how do you know that right there? You can circle that in your Bible he says how do you guys how do you y'all advise me to answer this people and they said very very wisely They've been around the block a few times They saw how Solomon's the final years of his reign was pretty ugly and people were oppressed and they weren't they weren't loving it at all And so they wisely said look be a servant to them if you're a servant to these people today And you serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them then they will be your servants forever So in other words, yes light in the oak repair this relationship that has been under strain Under solemnly for all this time the inverse he foresook the council of the old men They'll give him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him So his frat buddies right his boyhood friends the boys that he wants to impress and get favors to and and they all think that They are friends with the king and they're gonna have all these favors You just imagine you know what they want out of this Okay, you just just imagine this but the boys that grew up with him stood before him and said or rather Excuse me.
He said to them what do you advise that we answer the people now? Note that so he already has his mind made up. That's my point He says to the old men. Hey, what do you guys say as if it's pro forma as if it's just what he needs to do So that way he doesn't burn any bridges or I don't give the wrong impression He kind of feels obligated I think to go to the old men and say okay, give me your advice I don't really care if it give me your advice.
I'm not gonna listen to it because he already says to the young man His buddies hey, what should we say to these elders right as if that's what he planned all along So his buddies all bravado and just kind of peacocks I guess you could say they say thus you shall speak to this people who said to you your father Mary Okay, please lighten it for us. Thus you shall say my little finger is thicker than my father's loins And now where as my father laid upon you a heavy yoke? I will add to your yoke my father chaste chastised with whips But I will chastise you with scorpions. So sure enough that's exactly what he does.
This is very ugly language It's a violent abusive language. He's already made up his mind. Yes, there is sexual innuendo there I'm gonna read a great quote from your cabinet after you'll buy it Old Testament here in a second But this is absolutely stupid for him like he has no idea what he's doing He's not wise at all He should have listened to the old men and now he's gonna certainly make things worse So consequently these twin ten tribes except for Benjamin and I'll explain why Benjamin a lot of personal thoughts as to why Benjamin Stay loyal to Judah. I'll talk about that later on down in the lesson here But sure enough these ten tribes rebel against Raya bomb and they make Jeroboam is king and they say here I'm gonna skip all the way down To verse 16 when all of Israel saw the king did not listen to them the people answer the king what portion have we in David?
We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse to your tents. Oh Israel look to your own house David, okay? So very interesting stuff here now this these words in response to Raya haboam We've already read them before if you go all the way back to second-senior chapter 20 You might remember the story where David is coming back to Jerusalem the whole rebellion with his son Absalom Was squash and so he's coming back to the city and there's a lot of tension with this character named Shiba Okay, and so she bah says the same thing almost verbatim you go back to check out the verse second-senior chapter 20 verse one He leads a very short-lived rebellion of the Israelite tribes against Judah and against the house of David It's squashed really really quickly, but that's a foreshadowing of this longer Well actually it's a permanent split up until the time of Christ anyways It's a permanent split of Israel from the David King, right? So it's like seeds were sewn back in David's time that had taken root and was never really eradicated right?
So I think that's what we're seeing here is that's rotten fruit of the tensions between Israel and Judah now really taking place Alright, so this whole exchange here is more than just a split You know, I think it's very evident. Okay, they separate and it's very political They don't want to be taxing anymore They want to be have forced labor and they just want to be able to breathe right? But your Catholic and her actual testament has a slightly longish quote But it's really really good how we're truly supposed to see the split and I want to develop it a little bit more with you Okay, all right So it says the account of Israel's rejection of Raya boom has the force of a divorce between the bride of Israel and the bit it king her husband Recall that David assumed the kingship over the northern over northern Israel on the basis of a covenant that in that employed language of bone and flesh Echoing the covenant between Adam and Eve. So you remember that when David becomes king He says you know where your bone where your flesh that's coming into language, right?
It's a family bond that echoes Adam and Eve so David is the royal bridegroom the royal husband and Israel is the bride and it goes on Let's see here more over later in the narrative all the people of Israel are compared to a bride who comes home to her husband in relation to the vidic king that second single 17 3 so I'm keeping with his imagery of the bridegroom king and the bridal people Raya bones adolescent advisors urge him to make a crudely chauvinistic boast my little finger is thicker than my father's loins and only lightly disguised sexual euphemism Raya bomb appears in the posture of the swaggering abuse of husband king right Israel departs to her own familial home In quote and I think that's so important to keep in mind here So yes, this is true Raya bomb is showing off if you understand the the metaphorical But I think very real relationship that the king is supposed to protect his bride the people protect her care for her nurture You know, so all of these things That's how we supposed to treat her but Solomon is not doing that towards the end of his life and Raya bomb is saying I'm gonna make it worse. So, you know, you and again, he says this, you know crude language here It's like I consider like locker room talk, you know, I mean It's my little fingers thicker than my father's loins, you know, you can not dispel that out for you I think you can clearly see the what he's referring to here But remember how many wives Solomon had already had the 700 wives and 300 porcupines or whatever it was the concupines or whatever It's the reverse. I was gonna mix up a thousand women's like wow my father had all of these women That's nothing he says that's nothing and I'm gonna chase it now luckily I do have to point this out with his abusive Sexual language is a violent language of the sexual boast here if you read the text he actually doesn't repeat that to the elder So maybe he had a little bit of wisdom to know that's all that's one step too far That's crossing the line but the line that the response about the whip since when chastising the waskorpions that he does say And so various commentators will point out that probably the scorpions They may refer to pieces of bone or metal that is woven into whip so that way it catches a person's flesh and tears it off That might be what's going on there, but certainly he's he's saying very violently very sexual in the window I'm going to make things so much worse and what happens if a husband abuses his wife and The wife says look, you know, we got to change We got to go to therapy or you need some whatever you'd help and he says no I'm gonna make it worse She's gonna pack up and go and that's exactly what is real does she packs it up it packs her bags and she leaves because Ray Hoboam refuses to be the husband the royal husband to her that God has called her to be all right now That is really really important So what I want to develop here is that this changes with Jesus now I'm gonna share with you Matthew chapter 11 Okay, Matthew chapter 11 is one of my favorite at the end the very last verses of Matthew chapter 11 a flip here I'm gonna read the whole little section here for you. It's really chapter 11 verses 28 through 30 I it's one of my favorite verses.
It's one of my favorite favorite verses especially I mean even as in high school when I first started reading scripture and studying it as a Protestant I was always one of my favorite passages, but now as an adult, you know All the responsibilities of life and kids and raising them it means even more to me But this has always been beautiful check this out Matthew 11 verse 28 come to me all who labor and are heavy laden And I will give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart And you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light now That's a beautiful verse come to Jesus rest with him in the whole I don't want to do another whole Bible study and burn up too much time on that passage But when he's talking about rest he's talking about Sabbath rest covenantal rest He's gonna restore our souls as a new creation and give us that Sabbath covenantal rest that we're created for right So that's all very beautiful to turn to Christ But what's so interesting is that guaranteed and a lot of commentators point this out guaranteed Jesus has Raya bomb story in mind so Raya bomb is an abusive royal bridegroom, right? He's violent and he's threatening Jesus comes and reverses that so he says I will lighten the Yoke I will lighten the load so come to Jesus. He is the new bridegroom. He's the new son of David He's both king and he is and he is not right.
He's human. He's divine. He is gentle right Raya bones abusive Jesus comes across as gentle and loving and meek and he will restore the relationship with his people that Raya Bone broke and that's what makes this so much more interesting and so much more beautiful Jesus is restoring the marriage between him and his people all right So because he is the royal bridegroom and there's so much to say so much has been written about Jesus as the divine bridegroom Grandpa is a fantastic book on this and there's just a lot out there Jesus is the divine bridegroom who comes to redeem and die for his people and bring her to himself That's the church that's the new Israel But this language here in Matthew about his yoke being light and taking his tea takes our burdens That's all him restoring the relationship with Israel and I geek out about that that is really really beautiful Okay, so that's what we need to understand this split from now on we need to understand the split of the kingdom as a divorce a divorce that lasts for a thousand years until Jesus comes in the Paschal mysteries and he Reverses it even it's gonna be the minister the ministry and the mission of the church the great commission to go out and to call all nations and all Descendants of the 12 tribes who have inter intermarried with all these gentile nations to come back into his one kingdom So a thousand year divorce think about that a thousand year divorce that is finally reversed with Jesus Christ All right, so this is all a political divorce also the religious divorce is right on coming right on the heels here Okay, so it's kind of split There's kind of political secular divorce going on but Raya bones apostasy is gonna bring about the religious divorce from God Alright, so beautiful stuff keep that in mind the end of chapter 12 really briefly here the prophet Shania tells Raya bomb Hey, this is from God you need to You need to relax don't go up and fight against Jeroboam and fight against the northern kingdom It's not gonna go so well for you and amazingly he actually obeys, okay So then that brings us here to the rather I should say the second half of chapter 12 Which is Jeroboam's horrific apostasy so this is this is the true religious divorce that's gonna take place And this is really what Jesus Jesus will restore all the tribes to himself in the one kingdom his church true But even more than that he's going to restore and heal the religious separation that comes about from Jeroboam So let's take a look at his apostasy and boy boy. I cannot overstate how bad it is So let's check this out.
Hey, this is dr. Nick Thank you so much for listening to this course sample if you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson Please become a student over at scripture and tradition calm where you can listen to this entire course But also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand however And whenever you want so thank you so much God bless you and keep setting your Bible