God Will Judge Every Deed (Walk Thru the Bible Week 22)

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Welcome to Walk Through the Bible, Susan Michael's 12-month journey through the most exciting

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book on the planet.

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It will transform your life one page at a time.

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Be sure to subscribe for future episodes that will ignite your faith and bring your Bible

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to life.

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Now, let's join our host, Susan Michael.

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Well, hey there and welcome back.

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This is Walk Through the Bible Week 22.

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We're reading this week from pages 674 to 704 in the Daily Bible and the dates of May

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28 through June 3 in the Daily Bible.

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Now the last couple of weeks, we have really been on a roller coaster.

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First we climbed to the very top of the mountains.

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I mean, it was glorious.

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The Kingdom of Israel was at their best ever under David and then King Solomon.

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It was the biggest.

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The borders were the biggest.

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It was the wealthiest.

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It had peace and prosperity.

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And under Solomon had a king that was just known for his wisdom throughout the earth.

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I mean, everything was going great.

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And then last week, that roller coaster just went flying down to the valley and our beloved

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King Solomon started worshiping other gods.

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It is so hard to understand how he could do that.

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But the heart is very deceptive and we follow where our heart takes us.

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And I also think, you know, there's some spiritual warfare that the enemy knows who's

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important and he tries to bring them down.

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And if there's any little open door, he'll get in there and entice.

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And he certainly did that with King Solomon.

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So God pronounced judgment, said he's going to rip the kingdom from Solomon, but he's

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going to wait until Solomon has died and he's going to do it from his son.

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And he's already spoken to Jeroboam that he's going to give him 10 tribes to be king over

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them.

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Of course, Jeroboam had to flee to Egypt.

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So that's where we left our story last week.

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We also are reading this week the book of Ecclesiastes.

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And there's some debate about Ecclesiastes of who actually wrote it.

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It means the preacher.

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Ecclesiastes means the preacher or teacher.

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It's believed Solomon wrote it, but it might have been written by someone posing to be

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Solomon.

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But if Solomon did write it, more than likely he wrote it at this period in his life, which

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is why the daily Bible places it here.

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Because the outlook in the Ecclesiastes is sometimes a little depressed.

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And it's a very secular outlook in a way, looking at earth and at life and its feudal.

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And he's asking the man's ultimate question, which is this, what is the meaning of life?

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And the book of Ecclesiastes, though, does have some gems in it where we see the truth

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in the midst of a rather depressed view of the world or a secular view of life.

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We find some gems.

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And so the most famous chapter in Ecclesiastes is chapter three.

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And this is the one that says there's a time for everything.

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And it's often quoted at funerals.

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We've all heard parts of this chapter.

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Not going to read through it, but just there's a time for everything and a season for every

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activity under the heavens, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot,

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etc., etc.

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So that is here in Ecclesiastes.

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I am going to read to you a portion from that chapter, chapter three, and starting with

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verse 10, says, I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.

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He has made everything beautiful in its time.

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He has also said eternity in the human heart.

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Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

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And I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while

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they live, that each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in their toll.

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This is the gift of God.

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I know that everything God does will endure forever.

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Nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away from it.

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And then down in verse 15, it says, or actually 16.

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When I saw something else under the sun, in the place of judgment wickedness was there,

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and in the place of justice wickedness was there, I said to myself, God will bring into

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judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity,

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a time to judge every deed.

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I just want to mention that throughout Ecclesiastes, when the writer uses this term under the sun,

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what I saw under the sun, he means on earth.

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Earth is under the sun, as opposed to the heavens that would be above the sun.

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But here he says, you know, no matter what, God is going to judge every deed.

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And this is what I want to bring out, the very last two verses of the entire book of

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Ecclesiastes, repeat that.

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And that's chapter 12, verses 13 through 14.

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Now all has been heard, and here is the conclusion of the matter.

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Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind, for God will bring

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every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

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So that is the conclusion of Ecclesiastes.

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And I think it probably came straight from the mouth of Solomon, that he realized God

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is going to judge every deed that I've done.

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And surely God's going to.

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So let's continue our story.

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Solomon now passes away, and his son, Rehoboam, becomes king.

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And so the people come to Rehoboam, and they said, listen, you know, your father really

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taxed us hard.

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He was really very hard on us.

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Can you just lighten the load?

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And you know, this is one of the ways that Solomon became so wealthy, was through a taxation

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system.

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Throughout the country he had 12 governors, and their main job was collecting the taxes

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from the people in their district and paying them to the king.

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And towards the end of his life, he had even conscripted Israelites as slave labor.

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And so I mean, he was very harsh on the people.

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And so they're looking to Rehoboam, and they're saying, can you lighten the load?

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And Rehoboam goes to the elders for advice, and they said, yes.

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But then he turns to his peers, the young people.

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And they said, no.

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So Rehoboam says to the people of Israel, you think my father was hard?

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I'm going to be even harder.

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And at the news of that, the people of Israel, the northern 10 tribes, said, forget it.

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And they turned back.

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They rejected Rehoboam as king.

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And they made Jeroboam, who had returned from Egypt, they made him king over the 10 tribes,

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just as the prophet had prophesied over Jeroboam that this was going to happen.

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So we now have two kingdoms, and we have two stories taking place simultaneously.

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The story of the southern kingdom of Judah with the king Rehoboam, and the story of the

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northern kingdom of Israel with the king Jeroboam.

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Now there was a lot of strife between the two, and the south was ready to go to war

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with the north, when in 1 Kings 12 the prophet says to them, do not fight against your brothers,

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the Israelites.

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Go home, every one of you, for this is my doing.

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Whoa.

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Division was God's doing, but it was.

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It was part of his judgment.

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Unfortunately, the king of the north, Jeroboam, does not follow the Lord's decrees and his

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commandments as God had told him to.

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God had made this amazing promise to Jeroboam that he was going to give him a dynasty as

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enduring as the one he had given David, but Jeroboam had to obey his commandments.

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And Jeroboam lost it all because what did he do?

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Well first of all, he looked at the situation and he said, all my people in my kingdom are

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now going to go down to the southern kingdom, to Jerusalem, in order to worship in the temple.

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And they're going to get down there and they're going to see the king, Jeroboam, and I'm going

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to lose him.

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So I need him to stay in the north to worship.

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So he built two golden calves and he put one in the north of Israel at Dan, the city of

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Dan, and he put the other one in the south of Israel in Bethel.

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So geographically people could come from wherever and reach one of these worship places.

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Now when we read this scripture, it's really quite astounding.

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It's like how can he do this?

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Because in 1 Kings 12, 28 he sets up these two golden calves and then he tells the people

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of Israel, here are your God's Israel who brought you up out of Egypt.

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Now from the research that I've done, Jeroboam was not probably saying to the people that

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the calves were their God that had brought them out of Egypt.

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I mean, that's just like how could he say that?

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But at that time in the Mesopotamian world, the gods were often seen riding on an animal.

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So it is very, very possible what he was saying was that here is the footstool of the God

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of Israel.

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So like in the temple, we said that the Ark of the Covenant was the footstool of God.

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His seat was in heaven, but the ark was like his footstool.

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It was his connecting point that maybe he was using the calves in that way, that they

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were the footstool of the God of Israel.

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He does say here are your gods who brought you up to Egypt.

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So that seems to go a little bit farther than that he was pointing to the God of Israel.

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Because also the bull was known to be a depiction of the God Bale.

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So the golden calf, it did a couple of different things.

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Number one, to the Israelites that still wanted to worship the God of Israel, he was saying

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like here he is, this is his footstool, the bull.

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But the bull also satisfied those that were practicing paganism and it made them comfortable

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in these worship sites that Jeroboam had set up.

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So at the very best, this was a perversion of the worship of the God of Israel.

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But at its worst, it did become idolatry.

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And so it was a political move to consolidate his kingdom, to give the people something

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to worship that they would worship and they would be loyal to him.

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And in order to do this, then he had to set up a new priesthood, a priesthood that would

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support this perversion and idolatrous element in the worship.

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So the Levites, it says, fled the north and went down to Judah, as well as any Israelites

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that really were after the pure worship of the God of Israel in the temple.

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And so they moved down to Judah.

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This is a terrible thing that Jeroboam has done.

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And in 1 Kings 13, the prophet denounces Jeroboam and these altars, which shows that God was

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very displeased with it.

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It was a bad thing.

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So even though God had made this amazing promise to Jeroboam, he had just brought down judgment

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on himself.

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There was continual war and division between the north and the south.

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And unfortunately, under Rehoboam in the south, Judah also turns to worshiping other gods.

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And this just goes to prove what we talked about last week.

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The idolatry around them was so enticing.

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And I'll tell you, for me, I don't understand.

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Why was it so tempting?

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Why would they be tempted?

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But there's something about the setting and the culture, and I think we'd only really

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understand it if we were standing there in the midst of it and saw how enticing it was.

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But it really was a downfall.

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And so Judah also falls into idolatry.

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The difference in the rest of our story, the difference between the north and the south,

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is that in the north all of the kings follow in the sin of Jeroboam.

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In the south, in Judah, we do have the story coming up of two good kings and they lead

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their people back into true worship of the God of Israel, but the rest of them don't.

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And so it's bad now, but it does only get worse.

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That does it for this week.

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I do want to point out to you a couple of resources.

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One is, today we heard about this altar in the city of Dan.

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And I want you to know that when you go with me to Israel, we always go to Tel Dan.

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And at Tel Dan, we enter the city and then we climb up the hills to get to the highest

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point of the city of Dan.

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It was a large settlement, but when you get up to that highest point, they have actually

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uncovered the altar of Jeroboam.

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And so you can see the stone platform and the stairs that go up where the priests would

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go up there to make the sacrifice on the altar.

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And it's really quite amazing to sit there and think, this is where this worship was,

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that then just it infiltrated all of northern Israel and for generations to come and brought

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the downfall.

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So in today's show notes, we have a sign up.

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You can sign up for the interest list of a tour to Israel as soon as we have the next

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one with the dates and we have the package together, we'll let you know when it is.

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And hopefully you can go with us and you can see this there at Tel Dan.

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And we'd love to have you go with us.

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So we have gone from our mountaintop down to the absolute lowest valley and we're going

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to stay here for a little bit in the coming weeks as we talk about the various kings

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throughout the history of the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah before their final,

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final judgment comes.

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So we'll see you back here next week.

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And until then, God bless.

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We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael.

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Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, CPNshows.com, YouTube, or

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wherever you like to listen and learn.

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Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJUSA, All Rights Reserved.