The Risk of Spiritual Negligence- Part 2

1 Corinthians 9:24-27.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on January 09, 2022.

Last week, we looked at the issue of spiritual negligence.  This is what we shouldn’t do.  The positive is to emphasize spiritual attentiveness and discipline.

There were three areas that we are told not to neglect.  First, we must not neglect our salvation, our faith in Christ and our love for Him.  We must maintain these at all costs.  Second, we must not neglect God’s Word.  We must become a student of the Word of the Creator.  Whose books in all of the Universe can compare to His?  Third, we must not neglect the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are in each of us.  You must pay attention and learn how the Spirit is gifting you to strengthen others.  You should exercise that gift by faith and by His direction.  You must also recognize God’s gifts in others that He is using to strengthen you.

In all of these, we risk eternal things.  To be negligent in these areas is to risk deception, weakness, knowledge, salvation, even our very souls.

Today, we will finish up this issue by looking at two metaphors that Paul gives to the Church in Corinth.

Let’s look at our passage.

Metaphors of spiritual things

Paul wrote several letters to the Corinthian Church.  He had a heavy burden for them because they were not thinking biblically about how they were living.  In short, they were clearly not using the mind of Christ.  They were using the mindset of the Greek culture within which they were immersed.

One of the big areas is being dealt with in this chapter of 1 Corinthians.  They are stuck making decisions based upon what they think their rights are, rather than out of love for one another.  Paul uses several examples of himself throughout the chapter to help them see how the mind of Christ thinks, and the kinds of choices it will make.

One area was material support of ministers.  Paul taught churches to care materially for those who care for them spiritually.  However, he would not receive that “right” from the Corinthian Church.  If he thought like them, then he would be demanding that they send him money or help in some manner.  However, Paul was purposefully sacrificing this right.  In fact, other churches were sometimes helping Paul so that he could minister to the Corinthians.  Paul also worked as a tent maker and mender.  He did this out of love for them.  Corinth was full of teachers who would come into town, put out a shingle, and make money by teaching some new philosophy to people.  Most of the time, this philosophy would be of precious little help to those receiving it, but the teacher made a good living off of it.  Paul was aware of these things and cared about the Gospel and the Corinthians too much to even let a hint of such be in his dealings with them.  Yes, he had the right, but love compelled him to choose the harder path for their sakes.

Paul also mentions that he had every right to get married and have a family like Peter and some of the other apostles.  However, Paul had chosen to remain unmarried so that he could focus all of his time on sharing the Gospel.  This is not to put down Peter.  Peter was already married when Christ called him.  Paul’s point is more about how he has chosen to sacrifice a right that he had out of love and for God’s purposes in the lives of others, like them.

To help them absorb this lesson in a way that came from their own Greek culture, Paul shares an analogy from the sports that Greeks loved to watch and to do.

The first Metaphor is also the main metaphor.  In verse 24 Paul speaks of a runner who runs a race.  All runners who enter a race hope to win the prize, but only one of them will.  In verse 26, Paul adds another metaphor in passing, that of boxing.  Boxers punch each other until one of them yields, passes out, or dies (as was the goal in some matches).

Now, it doesn’t take an Olympic coach to figure out the basics of becoming a good runner or a good boxer.  With these metaphors in mind, Paul points out areas of neglect in the Christian’s life that would be as foolish as if an athlete had done them, or neglected them.

Verse 25 shows that we must not neglect our training, which is self-discipline in essence.  Athletes live in very specific ways.  They eat and don’t eat certain foods.  The same with drink.  They will run or box everyday working on the fundamentals of their sport until it becomes locked into their muscle memory.  They will fastidiously adhere to quite rigid rules that they have set for themselves, or their coach, in order to obtain the goal, winning. 

If athletes are willing to train so diligently in order to obtain a temporal prize, shouldn’t Christians be even more diligent in our spiritual training in order to obtain an eternal prize?  How much more should we bring our bodies and lives under subjection (vs. 27) so that we can spiritually win?  The answer is rhetorical, but easy to dismiss as if it is not that important.

It is amazing how many hours we can spend on entertainments, or on books of some value, but not in comparison to God’s Word.  We can simply tell ourselves that it is far more fun watching a football game then studying God’s Word.  When I was in High School, I remember turning out for football.  It seemed that many of the best athletes were more interested in drinking beer than even coming out for the team.  Of course, others came out for the team, but were more focused on partying than training.  That directly affected what our football team was able to do.

How is your training?  Do you study God’s Word as if it was information from the Creator of all things that will help you win the prize that can be won in this life?  Or, do you spend more time on things that not only don’t help you, but become detrimental because you have “no time” for studying His Word.  “My people perish for lack of knowledge,” says our Lord!

God help us to stop wasting the time that we have outside of work and sleep on temporary things that won’t matter several years from now.  Don’t get me wrong.  We are supposed to do the temporary for eternal purposes, which redeems it.  Our very lives are the definition of temporary, but they can be lived for eternal glory!  The only way you can and will do that is if you are serious about your spiritual training in Christ, being a disciple.

But, reading and meditating on God’s Word is not enough.  We must put it into practice.  Training is all about getting ready for the race or for the boxing match.  However, in life we don’t have a schedule and don’t know when these things will occur.  In some way, we are tested every day.  Life is a series of pop-quizzes, or “pop-races.”  You are either ready or you aren’t, but at least at the end of the day you will know what you need to work on.  So, let’s look at those quizzes.

How is our running and our boxing?  Paul is telling us to run in such a way as to win the prize, called a crown in verse 25.  Am I doing well enough to win a crown?  The Bible speaks of believers winning crowns in several places of which this is one.

Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.  2 Timothy 4:8 (NKJV)

Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.  James 1:12 (NKJV)

and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away. 1 Peter 5:4 (NKJV)

Behold, I am coming quickly!  Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown.  Revelation 3:11 (NKJV)

That last word is from our Lord Himself.  Notice that God has that crown for you; it is obtainable.  But, you are going to have to go after it both in training and executing that training in the trials and bouts of life.

I don’t think that these are actually different crowns that we can stack up on top of each other, but rather, they are different ways of describing God’s crowning of His people.  I think we will have some kind of literal symbol of our win, but righteousness, life and glory are just different facets of that singular prize, reigning with Jesus!

There are different things that Paul points out about our running or boxing.  First, we are to run with certainty.  We are to know how we are to run and in what direction we are to run.  Christians are to be examples of God’s righteousness and are to be focused on pleasing the Father, not ourselves, or the world.  Too many Christians appear to be running away from God’s Word and towards the world.  This kind of running will not win the prize.

Second, a boxer doesn’t close their eyes and wail away at the air.  We must fight with a clear picture of reality, both the reality that is going on inside of me and the reality of our opponent.  We need to face reality so that we can fight in truth, not a fantasy fight, and with wisdom.  This reality includes my recognition that the most dangerous opponent is my own flesh.  A Christian who understands the reality of the weakness of their own flesh will train that flesh so that it will serve an eternal purpose rather than a temporal one.

Of course, elsewhere, Paul reminds us that our battle is not with flesh and blood, the people we encounter and tangle with.  Rather, our battle is with the spiritual powers that work on my mind and the minds of people around me in order to pull us away from the Lord.  May God help us to give the Devil a black-eye by training and then boxing him as the Lord leads the way.  In our own flesh, we are unable to stand against the Devil, but “greater is he that is in us, than he that is in the world!”

Spiritual Negligence Part 2 audio

Responding to the Holy Spirit-Part 4

James 4:2-4; Exodus 34:12-16; Hosea 1:2; 3:1-2; Revelation 17:3-6; 18:4-5.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on November 21, 2021.

We continue today talking about those who respond to the Holy Spirit by joining Christ’s Church, and yet who then fall away from the truth.  Some of them walk away from the Church.  However, others stay in the Church and pervert its teachings into another Gospel, and its purpose towards another Christ.

The biblical image for this is an unfaithful prostitute.  Let’s get into our passages.

The biblical picture of the unfaithful bride who has become a prostitute

James 4:2-4 helps us to see that this metaphor really is being used of Christians.  James refers to these believers as “adulterers,” and “adulteresses.”  This is the spiritual problem of not staying faithful to Jesus and going after something, or someone, other than him.  These believers wanted things in life and were fighting each other in order to get them.  This adulterer metaphor is essentially the same as the prostitute, which just pictures the problem as far worse, or progressed.

This is the contrasting picture to the virginal chaste bride.  That bride was faithful to her groom, but this bride has not only gone after another, but has sold herself to them.  We see this picture throughout the Old Testament.

In Exodus 34:12-16, Israel is still at Mt. Sinai and Moses is going back up the mountain to have God put His commands on two new tablets of stone.  The first two had been broken by Moses when he came down the mountain and found the people worshiping a golden calf.  Moses had been up on the mountain for 40 days, and they didn’t think he was coming back.  God tells Moses that the people have “corrupted themselves.”  Here, God is warning Israel against further corruption.

Notice in verse 15 that what the other nations were doing in their religious rituals was considered spiritual prostitution as well.  “They play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifices to their gods…” The nations all around Israel were not made by God to worship false gods, or pretender gods.  They were made to worship the One True God alone.  However, God had cast them off after the Tower of Babel incident.  Israel was called and created by God in order to be different from the other nations.

This activity of worshiping other gods was a continual temptation for Israel.  It did not help that sexual immorality was used in all of the ancient religious rituals.  Through sex with a temple prostitute (male or female), a person could worship and connect to the power of that “god.”  This is how the story of Balaam ended.  He could not curse Israel, so he taught Balak how to get God to be angry with Israel.  The Moabite and Midianite women came to the edge of the camp of Israel, shook their booty, and invited the Israelite men to come join them in their worship ceremonies.  It was a worship ceremony that was both literally and spiritually prostitution.  The sexual immorality broke the law of God, but the worshiping of these pretending gods broke His laws and His heart.

The whole book of Hosea (another way of saying Joshua or Yeshua) focuses on Israel being a wayward wife of God.  It mixes the images of an adulteress and a prostitute.  Israel’s sin is so bad that her spiritual adulteries had descended first into being paid for her spiritual adultery (prostitution), and then, one prophet even decries Israel for paying others, making her the John instead of the prostitute.  It is best to see all of these as simply speaking to the same spiritual problem of being unfaithful to God.

In Hosea 1:2, God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute, so he marries Gomer and has three kids with her.  Some scholars believe that Gomer only became a prostitute later, but the text does not tell us this. Chapter two describes the harlotry of Israel and how God would bring judgment upon them followed by mercy.  Let’s look at the opening of chapter 3.

Hosea is instructed to “go again” (take back to himself) a woman who is being loved by another in adultery.  We then see Hosea paying money for his wife.  It is unclear what this money is for.  Some believe Gomer has actually ended up on a slave block to cover her debts incurred in paying for lovers.  Yet, this is not stated in the text.  It is more natural to understand that Hosea is somehow buying her out of her prostitution, such as paying her an amount to quit.  This would represent an unthinkable act of love from a jilted lover that would be equivalent to paying other prostitutes to leave her alone.  By the way, the imagery here is not intended to project that women are the ones who commit adultery and men don’t.  Remember, Hosea represents a picture of God Himself and Gomer is representative of Israel.

Do we not see the irony behind Hosea’s name being a variant of our Lord’s name, Yeshua, “Yahweh Saves?”  We can pride ourselves that this is about Israel, but doesn’t it beg the question about His Church?  Should it then surprise us that this metaphor would be used in regards to the Church of Jesus?  Are we insulated from the problem of spiritual prostitution, to which Israel often succumbed?  We clearly are not.

Back in James 4, verses 5-10 tell these adulterous Christians to repent of their wickedness and turn back to God.  “Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Lament and mourn and weep!  Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom.  Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

Repentance is the solution to spiritual adultery, turning from the false loves and towards the only true love in this universe, Jesus!  Let us continually be a people clearing our lives of any sin and drawing near to God.  This is a heart issue that requires vigilant maintenance.

Yet, the truth is that some adulterous hearts can’t be cured.  The last words from the Apostles of Jesus come from John in Revelation.  There God shows him a horrible image of a great prostitute that would be prevalent in the last days.  She would even be the mother of many other prostitutes and abominations of the earth.  Before we read some of it, let’s think about history for a bit.

Noah and his family step off of the boat as the saved people of God who have the true worship of God.  3 to 4 generations later, Nimrod has most of them building a tower to connect to the gods in rebellion against God.  This is the Tower of Babel.  The project is judged and the people are scattered.  Basically, God gives them over to the spiritual entities that they were cavorting with at Babel (the Hebrew means confusion, but the original language speaks of a god gate).  They were adulterous against God’s command and against Him personally as in going after other gods.  It is then that God calls Abram out of this outcast community to become the new saved community that has the true worship of God. 

4 centuries later, the people of Israel have corrupted themselves in Egypt.  Yes, they are physical slaves, but the Bible tells us that many of them were worshiping the gods of Egypt, spiritual slavery and spiritual adultery.  Yet, Moses shows up and calls them to repent and come out of Egypt.  Most of them followed him.  In the first century, Israel had built their own false religion in rebellion to God.  In Jesus, God shows up to call out His faithful remnant.  This is the historical context to the end-times harlot.  Let’s look at Revelation 17:3-6 and 18:4-5.

It is important to recognize in chapter 17 that there is a historical aspect to her (Babylon), and yet she is still active.  Also, she delights in drinking the blood of the saints.  In other words, she loses restrain (gets drunk) on killing true believers.

It seems impossible that Christians or churches, whose Lord was put to death by people who claimed to love God, could become so corrupt.  However, it is exactly what we are seeing happen in our own day, much less what has happened throughout history.  Those who claim to represent God/Jesus, and love His truth, will sick the world upon believers who truly do love Jesus and want him more than the world.

This woman is pictured as riding the beast because she thinks that she is in control of it, but she is in for a rude awakening.  The same chapter tells us that God has put it in the heart of the beast, and the 10 kings who back him, to burn her with fire.  This leads to the warning in chapter 18:4-5.

God’s people have been continually coming out from the false religion of this world, which is just a corruption of those who earlier were brought out from an earlier corruption.  Noah is brought out of the corrupt ancient world.  Abram is brought out of the corrupt post-flood world.  Israel was brought out of Egypt, and the Church was a remnant called out of corrupt Israel.  All Gentiles are called out of the nations from which they were born.

All institutions and individuals deal with a kind of mission creep.  If they will not purify themselves through repentance, then they will become corrupt.  At this point, the Holy Spirit will lead true believers out of the institution, leaving it to the destruction that God will bring upon it.  It is easy to look at past institutions and say that it doesn’t apply to you.  Roman Catholics can look to Israel and tell themselves they are the saved group.  Orthodox and Protestants can look at the Roman Catholics and tell themselves they are the saved group.  Pentecostals can look at the Protestant denominations that threw them out of their churches and pat themselves on the back.  However, that paves the road to destruction.  This is a problem for us all.

Friend, let’s keep our hearts and our group focused on Jesus, His Word, His coming, and his truth.  Let’s avoid becoming and participating in the destruction of the great prostitute that is on the horizon.

Holy Spirit pt 4 audio

Folly or Wisdom? Part I

1 Kings 22:1-18.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on February 18, 2018.

The book of proverbs in the bible is famous for its sayings which warn people to avoid folly and choose wisdom.  Of course the Way of the Lord is always presented as the path of wisdom, and all the ways invented by mankind besides it are presented as the paths of folly.  So, how does wisdom fit in with the New Testament’s emphasis on love?  We will find in this chapter a help in this matter.  Here we find that a person can love God and their fellow man, and yet, make foolish choices.  Foolish choices lead to folly and folly eventually leads to destruction in one form or another.

It can be easy to think that because one has put their faith in Jesus, and have whole-heartedly pursued a love of God and your neighbor, that somehow we would be insulated from making foolish choices.  However, this is not true.  To choose to believe in Jesus and follow Him as your master is the wisest thing you will ever do.  Yet, every choice we face is a test, even if we have strung together a long streak of wise choices.  That said, if love for God and our neighbor is the foundation on which we build, then wisdom is how and what we build on top of that foundation.  May God help us all to be wise followers of Jesus.

A righteous person can act foolishly

As we open this chapter we will find three main characters and three cities that are important in our understanding.  Jehoshaphat is the King of Judah who reigns in Jerusalem.  He has gone north to visit with King Ahab of Northern Israel who reigns in Samaria.  These two kings couldn’t be more different.  Jehoshaphat is described as a righteous king who led his people to worship the God of Israel, and the God of Israel was with him. However, Ahab is described as a wicked king who led his people to worship the Canaanite god Baal, and God was against him.  In fact Ahab has been told by Elijah the prophet that he is under a decree of death from the God of Israel.  Thus, during Jehoshaphat’s visit with Ahab in Samaria, Ahab brings up a city called Ramoth in the Gilead region.  This was on the eastern side of the Jordan River Valley and up on the plains above it.  This city had served as one of Israel’s cities of refuge that belonged to the Levites.  Ben Hadad of Syria had captured it at some point and had not returned it, even though he had been twice defeated by Israel (see 1 Kings 20).  Ahab wants Jehoshaphat to join forces with him and take it back.  Now our last character is the prophet of the Lord, Micaiah.  We know very little of this individual except what is revealed in this chapter.  Though it is not specifically stated, it seems that Ahab may have had him imprisoned within Samaria before this event because of his command in verse 26 to have Micaiah “taken back” to the governor of Samaria in order to be imprisoned.  Regardless, Micaiah is a righteous follower of the God of Israel and will prove to be wise.

Ultimately this chapter is about the folly of people in the face of God’s continued gracious appeal to turn from it.  Ahab’s folly is that of a wicked person who has chosen to be an enemy of God.  All his false prophets can be lumped into that category along with him.  Jehoshaphat, on the other hand, is a righteous person who wants so badly to fix things that he makes foolish choices, instead of trusting in the Lord’s wisdom in regard to actions and timing.  Lastly we see all the soldiers who go along with the folly of their leaders for varying reasons.  Some agree with the king, some are ambivalent, and some no doubt only do so out of fear.  Citizens generally suffer from the folly of their leaders decisions and are blessed by their wisdom.

For our purposes we will focus on Jehoshaphat.  When propositioned by Ahab to join forces, he is quick to agree.  This speedy agreement, no doubt, comes from a good heart.  He hates to see the once united nation of Israel divided and fighting each other.  He thinks his good will and alliance with Ahab will make unity and heal the breach.  In fact, in later chapters we find that Jehoshaphat had strengthened this alliance by having his son Jehoram marry Ahab’s daughter, Athaliah.  This is the same Athaliah who nearly killed the whole royal line of David.  If not for God’s mercy to have the infant Joash hidden from her, she would have succeeded in usurping the Davidic throne and God’s promises to David.  I am sure that Jehoshaphat also hates to see the enemies of God ruling over a city of Israel.  Though he has righteous intentions, Jehoshaphat does not recognize that he is allying with a wicked man whom God is planning to have killed.  To join together with such a person is to put yourself in the crosshairs.  You do not want to be in league with a wicked person when God decides to bring them down.

It may be good to stop and think about how we can be guilty of this today.  Many in the Church of God who want to see unity among the denominations and acceptance within the culture will make love and unity their rally cry.  There is nothing wrong with having these things at the heart of our actions and speech.  However, as we see in this story, it is never good to ally ourselves with people who are at odds with God and His Anointed, Jesus.  There is a proper timing and a proper way to healing the breaches that have happened in our nation and society.  In our zeal to “fix things” we can make foolish choices that lead to further harm.  May God help us to lean only upon His wisdom and wait for His timing, rather than rushing ahead with people who are under the judgment of God.

To his credit, Jehoshaphat asks Ahab to inquire of the God of Israel in verse 5.  At the end of the day this is a wise thing to do and could have been the very thing that saved him from his own naiveté.  But we will deal with that later.  Ahab calls forward 400 prophets who begin prophesying that if they go to battle they will win.  These prophets are clearly not prophets of the God of Israel because Jehoshaphat immediately asks if there isn’t a prophet of the God of Israel.  These are either prophets of Baal or Asherah or both.  It is difficult to tell if Ahab was trying to present them as prophets of the God of Israel, but this is highly probable.  Ahab knows that Jehoshaphat only serves the God of Israel.  Regardless of how Jehoshaphat knows (most likely their demeanor smacked of paganism), he has a big “red flag” moment in his heart.  He knows that these 400 prophets do not represent the message of the God of Israel.  So why not tell Ahab you are not interested in going to battle?  Perhaps he is in too deep and doesn’t want to mess up the good-will that he has obtained with Ahab.  Thus Jehoshaphat disregards a huge red flag and pushes on trying to find a justification to help Ahab.

When Jehoshaphat asks Ahab if there isn’t still a prophet of the God of Israel available, Ahab answers that there is one (notice he doesn’t bring up Elijah).  However, Ahab says that he hates the prophet because he never has anything good to say about Ahab.  Now, a prophet’s job is not to make the king feel good about himself, but rather to tell him the truth.  The prophets of the God of Israel were not enemies of Ahab.  They only told him the truth.  It was his obstinate insistence to reject their words that had led to his death decree.  Jehoshaphat recognizes how dangerous Ahab’s statement is.  To say that you hate a true prophet of God is to hate God.    Though he softly rebukes Ahab, he disregards another huge red flag telling him that he is on the wrong path.

A righteous person can act wisely

As Jehoshaphat and Ahab wait for Micaiah to be summoned, we are told that the false prophets continue to do their prophesying.  One particular false prophet named Zedekiah has fashioned some iron horns for himself as a prophetic prop.  He proclaims that with these two iron horns Israel will gore the Syrians.  In Israel horns were used symbolically of a king and his kingdom.  Thus the two horns are Ahab and Jehoshaphat.

Meanwhile some officer is bringing Micaiah to the Kings and clearly applies some social pressure to him.  He tells Micaiah that 400 prophets are telling the kings that they will be successful and that he should agree with them.   Such social pressure to support the public policy of the king, or the current leaders, is the folly of many a government.  Yes-men never help a leader, but rather fail their duty to fully inform and counsel them.  We see this same dynamic within our own politics and within the culture of our society.  Often believers in Jesus are pressured to speak and act in a socially acceptable way because so many are already going along with it.  Yet, Micaiah is a righteous man who wisely refuses to bow to such pressures.  He states that he will only speak what the Lord tells him to speak.  This sounds familiar with the words of Jesus in John 12:49 (and in many other places), “For I [Jesus] have not spoken on My own authority, but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.”  He also mentions that He only does what He has been told by His Father.  Is this my resolve?  Imagine how different the response of the churches in our land would be if they all followed the path of Micaiah, and ultimately that of Jesus.  Is my resolve to only speak and do what God wants me to speak and do? 

When Micaiah is finally brought before the kings, it may seem strange that he actually does tell Ahab that he will be successful.  But, it is clear in the context that he is being sarcastic.  Ahab immediately adjures him to tell the truth.  I do not believe that Micaiah’s sarcasm presents any ethical problem.  It is clear that he and Ahab have a history wherein Ahab has continually disregarded the word of the Lord from Micaiah.  Thus when Ahab asks for the truth, he is not really asking for truth so that he can obey the Lord.  Ahab will go to war regardless of what Micaiah has to say.  Instead Ahab sees Micaiah as a source of “spiritual chatter.”  He wants to know what the prophets of Yahweh have to say.  Perhaps he can glean enough information to prevent what they are predicting.  All of this is happening in front of Jehoshaphat and should be even another red flag to him.    I believe that Micaiah’s sarcasm actually highlights the hypocrisy of Ahab.  He has never really wanted the truth because he has always embraced the lie of Baal and his religion.

Of course Micaiah then tells the kings what he saw in a vision.  His words are worth noting.  “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, like sheep without a shepherd.”  These are similar of the words Matthew used in Matthew 9:36.  “But when [Jesus] saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.”  This metaphor of sheep without a shepherd is used throughout the Bible.  Moses used this metaphor when God told him it was time for him to die.  In Numbers 21:17 Moses asks God to appoint another leader so that Israel would not be like sheep without a shepherd.  In other words they would be vulnerable to the world around them without strong, godly leadership.  David used it in Psalm 23 to declare, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”  Of course Jesus used description of the good shepherd for himself.  In Ezekiel 34:12 the Lord says, “As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.”  Lastly, in Zechariah 10:2 God says, “The idols speak delusion; the diviners envision lies, and tell false dreams; they comfort in vain.  Therefore the people wend their way like sheep; they are in trouble because there is no shepherd.”

Even with Ahab as their king, Israel has been without a true shepherd for years because Ahab is a false shepherd who only cares about himself.  His actions are only leading to a scattering of the sheep both physically and spiritually.  Yet, God has promised to regather His sheep who have been scattered.  Today, Christians are a part of God’s work of regathering the sheep.  However, it is not just the lost sheep of Israel, but of the whole world.  In the midst of God’s regathering process we must be wise and lean upon the wisdom of the Lord rather than our own.  Yes, God so loves the world that He gave His One and Only Son that whoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life.  However, no amount of false unity and pretending that the wicked are not in danger will save them.  Only the truth sets us free.  Let’s be righteous people who choose wisely rather than being led into folly.

Folly or Wisdom audio