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ABRAHAM AND SARAH .....
When Abraham was 75 years old, God promised to make a
great nation of him. (Genesis 12:1-3) Ten. years went by, and Sarah
had no child, so Abraham took her bad advice and Ishmael was born of
Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid. That was not God's way, and Ishmael was
not the son of promise.
Thirteen years later, God appeared to Abraham and
confirmed His promise to make a great nation of him. Abraham believed
the Lord and the covenant of circumcision was established between
them.
Isaac, the promised heir, was born of Sarah when
Abraham was 100 years old, and God's way was finally accomplished in
the lives of Abraham and Sarah.
ISAAC AND REBEKAH ....
Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah, and the
Lord confirmed His covenant with Isaac. Nineteen years went by, and
they had no children. Isaac prayed for a son, and Rebekah conceived
twin sons. Before they were born, the Lord told Rebekah that the
eldest son, Esau, would serve the younger son, Jacob. (Genesis
25:20-23)
As the boys grew to manhood Esau became Isaac's
favorite, but Rebekah preferred Jacob. (Genesis 25:27,28) God's way
was to have Jacob receive the blessing of the firstborn son, but Isaac
planned to give the blessing to his eldest son Esau. When Rebekah
heard of her husband's plans for Esau, she devised a plan of her own,
and caused Jacob to deceive his father by making him believe that he
was Esau, and Jacob was given all the blessings of the firstborn. When
Esau found out, he decided to kill his brother after their father
died, so Rebekah sent Jacob to her brother Laban in Haran and said she
would send for him later. (Genesis 27:41-45) That was the last time
Rebekah ever saw Jacob, as she died while he was in Haran.
JACOB AND RACHEL .....
On Jacob's way to uncle Laban's house, the Lord
appeared to him in a dream one night and confirmed the Abrahamic
covenant with Jacob. (Genesis 28:11-15)
Laban had two daughters Leah and Rachel. Jacob loved
Rachel, and Laban promised to give her to Jacob if he would work for
him for seven years. However, Laban deceived Jacob on his wedding
night by giving his eldest daughter Leah to Jacob instead and then
promised to give Rachel to him if he would work another seven years,
and Jacob agreed. Leah bore eight sons, and Rachel was barren. When
Rachel demanded that Jacob give her a son, he became angry instead of
asking the Lord about it as his father Isaac had done; however, the
Lord gave her a son whom they named Joseph.
During the next twenty years Jacob worked for Laban,
and many sons and daughters were born to him ... not only 10 sons from
Laban's two daughters, but also two from their handmaids Bilhah and
Zilpah, making a total of 12 sons who would be the patriarchs of the
nation that would later be called Israel. (Genesis 35:22b-26) The Lord
never sanctioned a man having more than one wife, but this was His
permissive will in the life of Jacob.
KING SAUL AND THE PROPHET SAMUEL .....
When the Children of Israel demanded a king so they
could be like all the other nations, God gave them the kind of man
they wanted a tall, good looking man by the name of Saul who would
rule over them for forty years.
No better Bible teacher or counselor could Saul have
had than God's prophet Samuel, but Saul had a free will to choose
whether or not he would listen to Samuel and act according to the
Lord's way or pursue his own desires, and he always chose his own way.
Whenever Samuel confronted Saul and asked why he deliberately
disobeyed the Lord's commands, Saul refused to take responsibility for
his actions and blamed others for his own foolish decisions. One of
those incidents is found in 1 Samuel 15:1-35.
After Samuel died, Saul did not receive any more
direction from the Lord, so when the Philistines were encamped around
them and ready to attack, Saul prayed for guidance, but the Lord did
not answer his prayers. In desperation, Saul consulted a witch and
asked her to bring Samuel up from the grave so he could advise him.
The witch had no power to do that, but the Lord raised Samuel up to
speak to Saul. Samuel told Saul that he and his sons were going to die
in battle the next day, and Saul died a miserable death. (1 Samuel 31
:1-13)
The reason for Saul's death is found in 1 Chronicles
10:13,14: "So Saul died because of his sin which he committed against
the Lord, even against the Word of the Lord which he refused to obey
and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to
inquire of it and inquired not of the Lord; therefore the Lord slew
him and gave the kingdom to David the son of Jesse."
KING DAVID .....
The Lord called David "a man after My own heart",
because David loved God's Word and he never worshipped idols. During
most of his life, David did things God's way, but when it came to
women he ignored the revealed will of God and followed his own will.
Regarding rules for kings many years before Israel had
a king, Moses wrote down some of God's specific rules for kings to
follow in Deuteronomy 17:14, 15 and 17: 'When you come into the land
which the Lord your God will give you and shall possess it and live in
it, you will say that you will set a king over you so you can be like
all the other nations. The Lord your God shall choose a king for you
from among your own people. You may not set a stranger over you. He
shall not multiply wives for himself so that his heart is turned away
from Me, nor shall he multiply gold and silver for his own pleasure."
David disobeyed what Moses said, and he desired many
wives who bore many children for him. His first six sons were born of
six different wives while he lived in Hebron where he reigned seven
and a half years, and the next four were born of Bathsheba during the
thirty-three years he ruled in Jerusalem. There were also nine more
sons by some of his other wives as well as those of his concubines. (1
Chronicles 3:1-9 and 2 Samuel 3:2-5 and 5:13-16)
By His permissive will, the Lord did not prevent David
from having all those women, but some of the sons which they bore
became a big disappointment to David. and two of them even attempted
to replace their father as king. (Absalom in 2 Samuel chapter 15 and
Adonijah in 1 Kings 1 :5-53. However, both of them failed miserably,
and the Lord's directive will prevailed, because Solomon became the
next king of Israel. (1 Chronicles 22:9,10)
KING SOLOMON .....
last king of the original 12-tribe kingdom of Israel.
The Lord promised to be with Solomon and his descendants if he would
walk in His ways. (1 Kings 11 :38,39) Solomon loved the Lord and when
He came to him in a dream and told him to ask for anything he desired,
Solomon asked for wisdom to rule God's people, and the request was
very pleasing to the Lord.
Solomon ruled well during his first years as king, and his fame,
wisdom and wealth were greater than any king of any nation who had
lived before him. However, contrary to the clear command of God in
Deuteronomy 17:14,15 & 17, Solomon decided to live his way, and he
followed his father's example of collecting many wives and concubines
for himself. In fact, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and, just
as the Lord had warned him, when Solomon was old, his wives turned his
heart away from the Lord, and he even bowed down to their idols.
The Lord became very angry with Solomon, and when his son Rehoboam
became king, God had it His way and divided the kingdom into two
separate nations.
JEROBOAM .....
Jeroboam was an industrious young man whom Solomon made ruler over the
house of Joseph. (1 Kings 11 :28) Later the Lord used Jeroboam as an
adversary to Solomon because of Solomon's acts of idolatry in his old
age.
One day when Jeroboam was leaving the city of Jerusalem, God's prophet
Ahijah met him, and they were alone in a field. Ahijah tore the new
garment he was wearing into twelve pieces and said to Jeroboam, ''Take
ten pieces of this garment for yourself, because the Lord has said He
will take ten of the tribes of Israel from Rehoboam, the son of
Solomon, and give them to you to rule, because they have forsaken the
Lord and worshipped idols. If you will walk in God's ways as David
did, He will be with you, and your descendants will rule after you."
(1 Kings 11 :29-38)
When Solomon heard about it, he tried to find a way to kill Jeroboam,
but Jeroboam escaped into Egypt where he remained until the death of
Solomon. (1 Kings 11 :40)
After Solomon's son Rehoboam became king, he rejected the advice of
the wise men who had served his father and listened to the young men
with whom he had grown up. He made some very foolish decisions that
caused the men of the 10 tribes to reject his authority; so they sent
for Jeroboam and made him their king.
Instead of believing God's Word and walking according to God's ways,
Jeroboam became afraid that the people would leave him and go back to
Jerusalem to worship the Lord, so he made two golden calves for them
to worship. He placed one in the northern city of Dan and the other
one in Beersheba in the southern part of Israel and told the people
they could worship the calves and not have to travel to Jerusalem on
the feast days. (1 Kings 12:26-33) Then Jeroboam took men of the
lowest rank and ordained them to be priests in those two places of
worship. 2 Kings 17-23 tells how Jeroboam drove Israel away from
following the Lord by making them sin the great sin of idolatry which
resulted in the Lord sending them into Assyrian captivity. After
Jeroboam did that, whenever his name is mentioned in the scriptures,
it is followed by the words, "who made Israel sin". By attempting to
separate Israel from Jerusalem, Jeroboam wasn't trying to separate
them from God, but his golden calves were designed to be mere images
of the God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and their
worship became a mixture of Judaism and paganism.
Samaria was the capitol of the Northern kingdom called Israel. In
pages 958-960 of Unger's Bible Dictionary, there is a great deal of
information regarding the worship of the Samaritans who were a mixed
race of people with a heathen core... a race that resulted from a
mixture of some Israelites who were left in the land when the nation
went into captivity and
other races of people who had been placed there by ancient Assyrian
kings. 2 Kings 17:24-41 has details of how one Assyrian king
repopulated the land of Israel after destroying their cities and tells
how the people were taught by a Jewish priest and then rejected the
ways of the Lord by mixing faith in the Lord with their idolatry.
In choosing his own way rather than following God's direction, we find
that during his
twenty-two year reign, Jeroboam's government exhibited one major idea
... to raise a barrier
against the reunion of the twelve tribes. Jeroboam was both a slave
and a victim to his desire,
and although he thought the barrier he raised would accomplish his
purpose, it only served to
show his great weakness.
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