You know, we're here to settle down and settle into the whole beauty of the local church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know that you're here because God gave you an affection for His church because of the affection that He gave you for Him. And there's nothing more precious in the world than the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is the reason for every single thing that has ever happened in history. Every government, every king, every event, every calamity, absolutely everything exists for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we're here to speak about such precious things. And I pray that our time together would help us to think more clearly, more beautifully about His Church. And these men are gonna come and speak and I know that there will be food from heaven for all of us. So I'm really grateful that you're here. There's a program that you can see that outlines our time.

There's an error in the schedule. I hope there's only one error in the schedule, and that is it only gives Jeff Pollard 30 minutes at the end of the day. That's actually not accurate. He can go as long as he wants. Amen?

Amen. Oh my. Well, I'd like to open our time in prayer and then we'll bring John Snyder up to help us begin to think through these matters. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for sending your son.

We thank you for his poverty that made many rich. We thank you for his loving kindness. We thank you for his rescue of our souls and the souls of those who have gathered in our churches. Oh Lord, I pray that you would use our time now for the beautification of your church, for her love toward you, for all of our love and affection toward you that as we're hearing these words that you would pour out your spirit upon us. I pray you'd pour your spirit upon the man who speaks and that you would pour your spirit out upon us, illuminating our minds, your Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth.

Oh Lord, I praise you for the power of preaching And I praise you for these men who have carefully and humbly considered what they ought to say here. And I pray that you would now bring to us the sacredness of your word, that we would treasure and cherish it in our hearts, that we would hide it in our hearts as we go about the day today. Oh Lord, I thank you for your your kindness to us. You've already shown us so many kindnesses today up to this very moment. Your mercies are new every morning and we praise you, oh Lord, for that.

Amen. Well, John, if you could start making your way up here. John Snyder coming to us from New Albany, Mississippi and John is the pastor of Christ Church there in New Albany. You know last year if you were here at the Worship of God conference, we were trying to put in the hands a series that John put together called Behold Your God. It's absolutely wonderful.

I so highly recommend it. I think, John, do you have some of those available here? You think so? And if you don't I'm pretty sure we have some at the NCFIC table but I know lots of families in our church went through this in their living rooms and I keep hearing people, people who have done that and it's been so helpful to them. And I think people who have gone through it say, you know, our hearts, our hearts burned for the Lord as we experienced those different sessions that John put together.

So I'm really grateful that you did that. So John, why don't you come up now and Open up the word of God. Well good morning. I'm going to move this. I'm not that tall, I can't see over it really.

That's alright. There you go. I am really glad to be with you this morning because, and I'm glad to be the first talker. That means I get to enjoy the rest of the day and not worry. I'm happy to be talking with you about the theme that we're going to look at this morning in turning our hearts back to the God of Scripture because we do live in a time of extraordinary opportunity.

I know that when we look at our phones and computers and our iPads and we see the news that we think that today is a day of extraordinary need and it is. The moral decline in our nation and the bankruptcy of the American evangelical response are twin concerns for anybody who is a Christian. But we do live in a time when things are getting so bad that some people are willing to rethink. They're willing to rethink church. They're willing to rethink the gospel.

They're willing to rethink the family. And So that really is a wonderful opportunity for the believer. When I went to the UK to do some studies, it was a wonderful opportunity for me to be in a church that was very Christocentric and warm. I didn't expect that going to the UK. When I came back to the United States around the year 2000, all my friends who were kind of reform minded were telling me, you know, great things are happening.

Reform churches are popping up everywhere. Churches planted by 20 year olds. So I was really excited and encouraged. Everywhere I looked there's a new church, there's a new church here, new church plant here. But The longer I watched, the more I was dismayed.

Because our response to the situation seems to me to be, for the most part, misdirected. I think the problem lies in part with the misdiagnosis of what we're dealing with. A wrong diagnosis isn't just regrettable, it's dangerous. Think of going to the doctor and the precious time that's lost if the doctor treats you for something that you don't have. It's not that the doctor isn't earnest, it's not that he doesn't care, it's not that the patient isn't faithful, it's not that the medication isn't good medication, it's that it's all based on the wrong diagnosis and so the earnestness of the doctor, the faithfulness of the patients, it's all headed in the wrong direction.

Spiritually, of course, it's the same. If we come to the world, if we come to the American church scene and we misdiagnose the problem then the earnestness of our labors will be of no value. And our medication we offer the church may be good medication. For instance, we offer them good biblical doctrines. But It may not be the biblical doctrines that were called for at this time.

And the response of the people that we talk to may be very passionate. But because the diagnosis is wrong, None of this really helps. One of the problems we find when we look at the big scene is that it does take a good deal of time for a religious trend to be demonstrated to be bankrupt. So for instance, 40 days of purpose for your church. I don't know if you did that.

But The Purpose Driven Life, of course, is a book that's been very popular. And I don't mean to say that it hasn't helped anyone. But telling Americans that they have purpose in their life, I think, was a misdiagnosis. And though millions of books were sold, ten years later we're not really any better off. And maybe we have the prayer of Jabez and we turn that into a mantra and regardless of how many of those were sold we're not really any better off if we're not careful we will waste another 10 years offering America a cure that isn't bad but it's not the cure that's needed.

So one of the helps we have of course is that scripture records so many periods in the history of God's people in which they have declined and how God sends men to turn the people back to himself. And not all of these accounts are positive. Many of the accounts, the men that go, they're God's hand-picked men to turn the people back. These men fail. What we're going to look at this morning is the account of four kings and one prophet.

Alright, four kings and one prophet. Four of these fail and one succeeds and the one that succeeds is not the prophet, alright, it's not the preacher. Well, I want us to start in 2 Kings. We're going to be hopping around between 1 Kings, 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. But let me get you to turn to 2 Kings chapter 17 and we're going to start at the last of the story really, 2 Kings 17, beginning in verse 20.

I want us to start at the end of the account. The end of the account. Second Kings 17 verse 20, and the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel, afflicted them and delivered them into the hand of plunderers until he had cast them from his sight. For he tore Israel from the house of David and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. Then Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made them commit a great sin.

For the children of Israel walked in the sins of Jeroboam which he did. They did not depart from them until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight as he had said by his servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria as it is this day. So that's the end of the story. This is where everything is going to end up for Israel.

God's people have been rejected. God's people have been handed over to their enemies and we understand that God's name has been blasphemed. Pagan nations don't look at this and see the northern tribes exiled and say to themselves, you know the reason that God did this is because He's so holy. They look at it and say the reason that this occurred is because our gods are superior. But where does it start?

Well it mentions a sin, the sin of Jeroboam and that's a common and recurring phrase in the Old Testament. We're going to be talking about that but that really isn't where it starts. We have to go further back than Jeroboam. We have to go back to 1 Kings chapter 11 and the sad ending of the life of a godly king, King Solomon. 1 Kings chapter 11, God Has handed the kingdom on from David to Solomon.

David is dead Others would take the throne, but God picks Solomon Solomon is given great promises. Solomon is given extraordinary gifts we know about his wisdom and he even has these unusual experiences. Twice God appears to Solomon and speaks with him about things that he needs to understand if he's going to guide the people carefully. It's a wonderful opportunity. But at the end of Solomon's life he drifts.

Let's read starting in verse one of chapter eleven. But King Solomon turned, sorry, but King Solomon loved many foreign women as well as the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, you shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after other gods. Solomon clung to these in love and he had 700 wives, princesses and 300 concubines and his wives turned away his heart For it was so that when Solomon was old that his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord and did not fully follow the Lord as did his father David. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem and for Molech, the abomination of the people of Ammon. And he did likewise for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. So the Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods but he did not keep what the Lord had commanded. Therefore the Lord said to Solomon because you have done this and have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant.

Well that's the account. Solomon has grown old, he's married these foreign women, his heart is turned away. It's not merely that he's pleasing his wives, that's really the sad thing here. But as an old man, Solomon's heart does go toward the idols and he becomes half-hearted toward the living God. No longer does he give God in whole what he owes him, but now he gives him what he owes him in part.

Solomon's life becomes one of compromise and the amazing account ends with the fact that Solomon begins and funding a national idolatry. Now how does that apply to us? Certainly not in every situation, but as a generalization I think we'd have to say we live in a generation that has been handed on an idolatrous version of evangelicalism. We think that our problem is that we're not God-centered and so God-centeredness has become so popular and I'm all for God-centeredness but I don't think that that is fundamentally the problem. I used to.

I used to think to myself as a pastor if only we could be centered around God, that would fix so much and we must be centered around God as believers. But the terrifying fact is that every church I've ever been to is God-centered, not just in word but in reality, and every person you have ever met is God centered and everyone in this room is God centered and everyone in the town is God centered. Everyone everywhere is God centered. The problem is this, that we are all centered around a God but not everyone is centered around the God of Scripture. There is an unbreakable link between what we think of when we think of God, even if we are atheists.

What we think of when we think of God and how we live the rest of our life and so if a church is God centered but the God they have embraced like Solomon is not quite the God of scripture then what flows from that is a destruction. I want us to consider three attempts to turn the people back to the living God. Three attempts that failed and we'll close with one that succeeded. The First is King Jeroboam. Now the prophet Ahijah goes to Jeroboam toward the end of Solomon's reign.

And he says to Jeroboam, who is kind of a lieutenant in Solomon's massive workforce, and he says to him, the Lord has chosen you. Solomon has drifted, the Lord has sworn that he will take the tribes away from Solomon, not all of them because of David's faithfulness. But ten tribes to the north will be taken away from the house of David and they will be given to you. And if we had time we could read the account in chapter 11 of 1 Kings verses 29 to the end. We find that God says wonderful things to Jeroboam.

He is the handpicked man for a time such as this. He is given the same promises and the same covenant mercies as David. The warning comes though, only follow the Lord. It's a great spiritual opportunity, isn't it? Jeroboam is going to be king of the northern tribes.

There's going to be a division. Surely there's a lot of confusion going on the people of God have to ask themselves how can ten tribes to the north be separated from the house of David what about the promises of God to our nation what about the promises of God to Abram Jeroboam was the man that God chose, he could have set his heart to follow the Lord and guided the ten tribes to the north to set their hearts to follow the Lord. But he doesn't. We find in 1 Kings chapter 12 and verse 25 God's description of Jeroboam's pragmatism. Let me get you to turn there with me, 1 Kings 12 verse 25 to the end of the chapter.

I want you to notice What pragmatism looks like in religion. Verse 25, then Jeroboam built Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim and he dwelt there. So that's the palace. And he went out from there and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now the kingdom may return to the house of David.

If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn back to their Lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. And they will kill me and go back to Rehoboam king of Judah. Therefore the king asked advice, made two calves of gold and said to the people, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt. And he set up one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.

Now this thing became a sin for the people who went to worship before the one as far as Dan. He made shrines on the high places and made priests from every class of people who were not of the sons of Levi. Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month like the feast that was in Judah and he offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did at Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he made. And at Bethel he installed the priest of the high places which he had made.

So he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bethel on the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the month which he had devised in his own heart and he ordained a feast for the children of Israel and he offered sacrifices on the altar and burned incense. Well here is the first attempt. God chooses a man, gives him these gracious promises and the man terribly fails. He's a pragmatist. But what does pragmatism look like in religion?

Well very quickly we have four things here. First of all in verse 28 we find that pragmatism will always choose to adjust God. To adjust God to fit us rather than us to fit God. So Jeroboam makes God into an image that strangely that the Israelites feel comfortable with, the golden calves. Astonishing to us, isn't it, that they do it again, but they do.

And then the second thing is that religion is dictated by convenience. You understand that the Jews up to the north in Dan have to travel all the way down three times a year to offer sacrifices in Jerusalem at those three great feasts. And so Jeroboam is a clever man and he and his strategist say, look, we can set up a worship center up north and we can put one down south near the border with Judah. And if you live up north, you don't have to travel all the way down. You can just go right there.

And if you live down south, then you don't have to go to Jerusalem. You can go right there. Because obviously he's afraid that if they go to Jerusalem attending worship at the temple their hearts will go back to the house of David. So a religion of convenience. In verse 31 there is an all inclusiveness.

He appoints priests of anyone who wishes to. And finally all of this is done in a way that mirrors the biblical religion. Now where does he get this? Well the scripture says he devised it in his own heart. This is the sin of Jeroboam.

This is the sin that we read about that leads Israel into destruction. Now let's stop before we look at anywhere else and apply it to ourselves. Solomon's day is our day. We've been handed a religion that is in many ways idolatrous. The God that many people talk about in America in the evangelical churches when contrasted with the descriptions of the Bible is very difficult to see that they're related.

If you go into the Christian bookshop and you walk through the t-shirts and the music and the devotional books, it is very difficult to think that these things flow out of the descriptions that we find of God in the Bible. A.W. Tozer one time went to speak to a group of Christian authors, it was all fiction authors, Christian romance, etc. And A.W. Tozer travels all the way to California, I think it was California, he gets off the train, he speaks to the people, he only gets to talk once because he infuriates the conference and he goes home.

I don't intend to do that, but this is what he said. He said to them, When I read your books, I think that anyone that reads your books and believes what you say, you make atheists of them. Because no one can read the way you describe God, the way you treat God in your books. No one can read that and then go back to the scripture and believe you're talking about the same God. But when God withdraws his manifest presence from his church, When it has been a long time, so long that many of us have never even seen it, and it's all history.

It's been a long time since there has been what the old writers called the days of the right hand of the most high. When God, what One Welsh writer wrote in the 18th century, the captain has taken the field. It's been a long time since any of us said that about American religion. Christ has taken the field. His foes fall before him.

It is an extraordinary season of grace. It's been a long time. Like the day that Solomon handed on, we live in a day when God has in response to our sin, He has to some measure withdrawn. And you're left with three options when you have church but not the wonderful presence of the Lord. You are left with the option of becoming an irreligious people but none of us have chosen that because you are here.

You are left with another option. You could add a lot of things to your religion so as to make it attractive. If God himself isn't attending your church, well at least we have all this other nice stuff, Jesus plus. Or the third option is that We stop everything and we ask ourselves the hard questions and we do all that is within our power to turn our hearts to seek the face of God. Jeroboam chose the second, didn't he?

God's not there. He offers them options. It's the day we live in. I think that the most common response of the new church plants to the emptiness of American religion is The same response that Jeroboam gave. The new churches planted by twenty year olds for twenty year olds, the extraordinary push into the urban areas, for the most part are distinguished by the same things that Jer Boms church was distinguished by.

Think of it. Number one, an adjusted God. When you walk into a church that is cool and cutting edge, Generally how they talk and sing, how they act, how they dress, it betrays that they've embraced a God that has been adjusted. I don't think that Paul would have gone from his prison cell into their church meeting and felt that it's the same God that he knew. But we can do that too, can't we?

We just aren't so cool. I mean I was walking around and I asked somebody, I'm lost here, you know, I do need a permanent minder. And so I'm wandering the campus and I saw somebody and I said, where do we meet in the early morning? And they said, sorry, I'm not with you all. And I looked and they were Fellowship Christian athletes.

And then I, it quickly became apparent. There are those who are dressed comfortably and then there are the suits. And we're the suits, all right? So we're not the cool group. But you don't have to be cool to do what Jeroboam did.

We can adjust God to look like us. We can make God in our own image. Is your God a Baptist? Is he a Republican? You say, no, no, he's a Tea Party.

Does he look like us? Is he a homeschooler? Is he middle class? Is he like us, just bigger? Do you find him manageable and reasonable?

When was the last time you opened the Scripture and in setting your heart to know the God of the Bible, you were bothered by the tremendous mystery of the difference between you and God. When was the Last time you were shocked at the way he acts. We come into his presence glibly. We swagger up into church. Not because we know the doctrine of the gospel so well, but because we know the God of the Bible so poorly.

We are not free of the temptation to make God look like us so that He fits the way we want to do life. The sin of Jeroboam. Second, convenient religion. Now this is really so ingrained in American culture that it's just hard to spot it and be an American at the same time. There are so many options for us in religion.

In the town where I pastor you can have any type of religion you want all under the name of Jesus Christ of course. I read of one church that's doing a drive through Lord's Supper, That's not in my town. In my town we're not nearly that, I mean we're a fairly conservative little southern town so we don't do that. But we do have superheroes Sunday and one time I drove by a church and on the church sign, I'm always fascinated by church signs and I have asked the church to purchase me a bulldozer to bulldoze church signs, but it really bothered them that I asked for that because they thought I was serious, but not serious. One church sign said, candy rain Sunday.

I was tempted to get a substitute preacher and I could find out what candy rain Sunday. My kids wanted to go to that church. Candy rain Sunday. I could just imagine. You may not do a drive-through Lord's Supper but have you adjusted religion so it's convenient?

I had a friend that planted a church, a very serious friend, a very serious minded, reformedish little Baptist church plant And a lot of young men there studying for the ministry. So they met with the pastor each Friday evening. Just a small group hammering out discipleship issues you know. But the problem was he couldn't get any of these seminary students to attend the Sunday morning prayer meeting that preceded the main preaching meeting. Prayer meeting at 10, preaching at 11.

But they can't get up. So he moves the prayer meeting. Preaching at eleven, prayer meeting at, then they had a lunch and the prayer meeting at one. They, they don't stay. You can move the prayer meeting to any slot on the week, but you can never make prayer so convenient that people who aren't interested in seeking the Lord are going to show up at your prayer meeting.

Once we've embraced an adjusted God, a God that kind of looks like one of us, just bigger, then offering people a convenient religion, what they want, makes perfect sense. Let me ask you a question. What makes you think you're not to Jeroboam? What makes you think that you don't attend Jeroboam's church? Another thing that Jeroboam did of course was he appointed leaders from anybody that wished.

Now, when we look at the big American scene we see this quite shockingly. We see people with very different views on sexuality who are now pastoring. We see women pastors. And we're horrified. And the preachers in your churches, maybe you're the preacher, it's very popular to rant and rave against this.

But I find it hard to find the preacher who rants and rave against appointing men who are influential in their small town, the bankers, the doctors, pointing them to positions of leadership when those men don't fit the biblical pattern. But they're nice guys and we don't want to offend them and we do what's expected of us. Long before any woman was made a pastor in an evangelical church long before any homosexual was made a priest, we have long ago embraced Jeroboam's view of religion that we have a right to appoint anyone who wants to church leadership. The best way to keep people involved in your church is just give them a position of spiritual significance that affirms them. We do what Jeroboam did.

We do all this if we are not careful. We do this and we do it in a way that mirrors the Bible. We still have the same special days. We still have the same book. We still have the same special words.

We still sing the same kind of hymns. But now everything has been bent around us. It's very hard to spot Jeroboam's religion. But it's a pretty popular approach. Now Jeroboam failed and the window of opportunity closed.

I hope we won't do that. Let's look at another man. Not Jeroboam but Rehoboam. Now if you went to Bible classes ever in college or seminary, it's always tricky. Who are these kings?

Where do they come from? Alright, here's my Bible class. Here's my lagniappe. This is extra, alright? Rehoboam, Jeroboam.

How do you keep them apart? Rehoboam is the real king from the line of David, Jeroboam is not. Real Rehoboam. Rehoboam is down south because of the idolatry of his father Solomon, God removes the ten tribes from him. Now we know that Rehoboam was arrogant and when the people sent delegates to him and said will you lighten up on us, he chose the arrogant response of saying if you think my father was hard you haven't seen anything yet.

But that really, the Bible is very clear if we read the accounts in 1 Kings 12 that really isn't why the nation was divided it was because of the idolatry of Solomon. Now Rehoboam is king of only only this southern portion what a unique opportunity imagine the scene here spiritually The people of God are divided and to the north, to the north, they are worshiping a golden cow again. What will we do to the south? It's a wonderful opportunity for Rehoboam to say my father, my father loved the Lord but he drifted. And Jeroboam to the north has led people away because he was a pragmatist but we will set our face to seek the God of our fathers.

But He doesn't. It is a wonderful time for Rehoboam but he wastes so much of it. Look at 2 Chronicles chapter 11. Second Chronicles chapter 11. I want you to notice something because we are going to see this again later in the reign of Asa.

Second Chronicles 11 13. When Jeroboam to the north starts his idolatry, then those in the north, the Levites and those who love the Lord in the north migrate to the south. Look at what the scripture says verse 13 And from all their territories the priests and the Levites who were in all Israel took their stand with him. For the Levites left their common lands and their possessions and they came to Judah and Jerusalem for Jeroboam and his sons had rejected them from serving as priests to the Lord. Then he appointed for himself priests of the high places for the demons and the calf idols which he had made.

And after the Levites left, those from all the tribes of Israel, such as set their heart to seek the Lord God of Israel came to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord God of their fathers. So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah and made Rehoboam the son of Solomon strong for three years because they walked in the way of David and Solomon for three years. What a time. Up north idolatry down come the priests of Levi and down comes a great migration of people whose hearts are set on the Lord and they strengthen the southern kingdom for three years. Why for three years?

Because in chapter 12 verse 1 of 2 Chronicles we find that Rehoboam is a great disappointment to those who migrated. He has not set his heart on the Lord. Look at what it says. Verse one, it came to pass that when Rehoboam had established the kingdom and strengthened himself that he forsook the law of the Lord and all Israel with him. Rehoboam gets established.

He's secure. The shock of the divided nation has passed. He has his smaller kingdom and in his security he proves that he is a man who is half-hearted about God. He is not the idolater that Jeroboam is, is he? But he's a half-hearted follower of the true God.

God sends Shishak, king of Egypt, to discipline Judah in the south. Shishak makes Judah kind of a vassal state. They have to pay him a tribute. When this hard time comes then a priest, sorry, a prophet is sent to Rehoboam and he says look this is because you've forsaken the Lord and Rehoboam and the princes of the land repent but the repentance is shallow and partial. God doesn't allow Shishak to take Judah but He allows Judah to remain under the thumb of Shishak for a while and the reason he gives is this so that you can discern the difference between serving Shishak and serving the living God.

Shishak loots a lot of Judah. One of the things he takes is the golden shields that Solomon has made. Quite impressive for those of you that are Tolkien fans. I really hate to mention Tolkien, because I think of the books. You might think of the movies.

But if you think in your mind, or if you saw the movies, Minas Tirith, the great white city. And imagine a city like that. You come to Jerusalem in the golden age of Solomon, and there's this great city. And there are these military towers, and there are walls, and the temple, and the palace. And along the top of the military towers there are these golden shields so from far away as you travel to the capital you can see in the sun these shields shining, very impressive but now they're gone because Shishak took them.

What Rehoboam does next is a picture of what he does with everything spiritually. He has men build bronze shields and put the polished bronze on the walls. Why bronze? Well, because unlike Solomon, Rehoboam can't afford gold. But instead of losing face, he just, you know, he saves face.

He puts up bronze. Bronze is good enough. From a distance, it's still impressive. And that's the religion of Rehoboam. From a distance, it's impressive.

You got gold calves down here, Rehoboam. Rehoboam, no not us. You worship at the right temple. You've got the right God. Yes, the right priest.

Yes. But get close to Jeroboam and you find that what God says about him is true. In verse 14 the Bible says this, and he did evil because he did not prepare his heart to seek the Lord. Rehoboam in God's eyes is a wicked man because this man never sets his heart to seek the Lord. He is half-hearted.

It is a wicked thing to occupy a position of spiritual leadership in a home, in a church, and yet refuse to set your heart fully upon Christ when so many promises are given to us. How do we apply this to us? Well I think that this is a thing that is closer to us than the sin of Jeroboam. Many churches seeing the emptiness of American religion and shocked by the cool new church approach which doesn't really look like the God of the Bible to us, an adjusted God, a convenient religion, Many churches seeing that have pulled back and like Rehoboam from a distance appear to be very serious about God. But when people migrate there, and people do migrate there, people leave the church that's dead, people leave the church that's silly, and they come to your church because it's serious.

And when they come, what do they find? Do they find like Rehoboam we have fine words but our half hearted seeking of the Lord, our stopping short leaves them as disappointed with us as they were with the other churches. Listen, Rehoboam haunts me. I don't know about you, but I have a picture in my mind of Rehoboam as a pastor. I pastor a little church in a southern town that's very conservative.

It's packed full of churches. But I pastor a church that is attempting to be serious and so we do get a lot of leaders from other churches as those churches take more and more of a path of maybe an entertainment kind of driven approach. Leaders from those churches become disenchanted and they show up where I pastor. Now they come because they hear that we're seeking the Lord. But my question is this, a few years after they get to know us, will they feel the same way the people that came to Rehoboam felt?

Will they have to say to themselves secretly, it's not what we thought it would be. The Lord's not here either. It's just fine words. What about your church? Fine words but do we have the reality?

Now Rehoboam failed. Let's look at a third attempt And that's found in 1 Kings 13. First Kings 13. It's the whole chapter and because we're talking about all this in one, we do want to have lunch so I'm going to have to tell you the story. In 1 Kings 13 we have the systemic decline now.

To the north we have an open idolatry, to the south we have a half-hearted fraudulent religion, a farce of seeking the Lord. Doesn't God have anything to say about this situation? Doesn't He have a messenger? He sins and He does and we find Him in 1 Kings 13, this unnamed man of God. What happens?

Well in the chapter we can easily divide it up. In verses 1 through 5 there's a great confrontation. The man of God comes from Judah to Bethel. Why to Bethel? Because Bethel is the southern worship center with the golden Catholics right across the border only about 20 miles from the border with Judah.

So God sends his preacher from the south about 20 miles into the Northern Territory, and he confronts Jeroboam right in the middle of this great worship service. Jeroboam has kind of made himself a high priest, so there he is. He's officiating, and while he's in the process of doing all of his religion and thousands are gathered there. Then this lonely man pipes up and he says, Jeroboam. And he gives the message that God is against what's happening here and he gives the, he gives prophecies.

This is how you'll know that I'm speaking the truth. Jeroboam of course is offended and so Jeroboam stretches out his hand and says grab that man and when he does the Lord strikes Jeroboam's hand and it withers and it's paralyzed And he can't pull it back to his body. You can understand what Jeroboam must be thinking. Jeroboam is the high priest of a religion where no god ever shows up. His golden calf never does anything.

His golden calf never hears a prayer. If he wants the golden calf to travel, he has to carry his God. But now the God that is a living God interrupts his worship. And it dawns on Jeroboam that this is a man from a living God, unlike what he has. So he says to the man, please intercede with God and ask him to restore my arm and the prophet prays and God restores his arm and Jeroboam does a very magnanimous thing.

He says, come home with me and I'll reward you. But in verses 6 through 10, there's a command that's revealed. The prophet says no I can't come home with you because of a very specific command. I wasn't just sent with a message. There's a very clear method for bringing it to you.

Here's the method. I'm not allowed to eat any food in your land. I'm not allowed to drink any water in your land. And I'm not allowed to travel the same road twice. Why is this required?

It's an object lesson, isn't it? It is a living sermon. The sermon wasn't the whole message. The method is part of the message, as always. But this is so distinct.

Now if you're a North Carolinian, and I happen to be a pastor in Mississippi. I'm not from Mississippi but we'll say I'm a Mississippian. What if I showed up here and you're very kind to me and you say here's here's your room there's some water there's some food and I say look I pack my own water. Pack my own food. I know what kind of people you are in North Carolina.

Everybody knows what kind of people you are. You guys are in a moral decline. I don't drink water from North Carolina. I don't eat food from North Carolina. I don't plan to get on the same road twice in North Carolina.

My God is so holy, He won't let me have any contact with your kind of people. What a different sermon it would have been if the young man said, God is offended at what you're doing, Jeroboam, you have polluted the land and then Jeroboam after he's healed says come home and the guy goes home for a two week royal vacation with the king. What would the people think? But what a sermon when after the sermon the man says I'm not allowed to drink water in this land because your land is polluted. I'm not allowed to eat your food.

I'm not allowed to travel the same road twice. God is so grieved at what you've done. So he heads home. Well in verses 11 through 19 of the chapter we find a compromise. There's an old preacher who once was a prophet of God.

He hears the account. Surely his heart is warm to hear what God is doing. He sends his son's saddles donkey and he goes out and he finds the young prophet traveling home and he says to him, come home with me, I'm a prophet too. And the man says, no I can't, God said, I can't eat your food, I can't drink your water here, I can't travel the same road twice. So the old prophet lies and he says, I'm a prophet too and an angel told me to tell you that it's okay to come home with me.

So the young man believes him. And in verse 20 to the end we find some consequences of the compromise. There are consequences to the young man, to the prophet. In the middle of supper God does speak to the old prophet and he stands up and says, Thus says the Lord, because you disobeyed me. You're not going to make it home alive.

And so they saddle the donkey. The young man takes off And on the way home, he's killed by a lion. The lion is there in the road. The dead man is there in the road. And the donkey is there in the road altogether.

The lion hasn't torn the body or attacked the donkey. The next morning, you can imagine the news. You can imagine Facebook. Did you hear what happened? You remember that guy that came to our big open service, to our big kick off, do you remember what he said about our priest, our king?

Do you remember What God did to our king's hand? Well now the guy's dead. Now what do people who don't know God think? We were right. We were right to embrace golden calves.

Our golden calf God has killed this guy. Obviously the message he brought against our church was wrong. God has struck him dead. So there's another consequence. Jeroboam returns to his idolatry.

Look at the end of 1 Kings 13. There's a terrible verse, verse 33. Speaking of the death of the young man and then verse 33 says this, after this event, what event? The sin of the prophet, the young prophet and his death. After this event Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way but again he made priests from every class of people for the high places.

Whoever wished he consecrated him and he became one of the priests of the high places and this thing was the sin of the house of Jeroboam so as to exterminate and destroy it from the face of the earth. Two consequences but look at that phrase. After this event Jeroboam again. It seems to us that in the short interval Jeroboam is terrified to continue on the path of idolatry. The breaks are on.

A living God has shown up and cursed him and then healed him. But in the morning when he hears that God has struck the prophet dead he takes courage and again he continues. The wheels start moving again in the idolatry of the north. It ends up being the death of Jeroboam and everybody in his family but it also ends up being the destruction of Israel which we read about with our first passage this morning. What application is there for us?

In the kingdom of God, those who would be used by God to turn an idolatrous people back to the Lord must not themselves be compromised with idolatry. And there's no excuse, nothing can substitute for holiness. No special calling substitutes for immediate and full obedience. Here's a man who's called by God, he's sent there with a message, there's an extraordinary miracle occurring, he's coming back. He hasn't got the right to cut corners with God, he must obey.

No calling. It's so easy as we grow older to become proud and to think that we don't have to be as carefully obedient as the people that we're guiding. So as a parent, we think to ourselves, when I was a baby Christian, I was very, very concerned about obedience, but I realize now that I don't have to be as strict. I mean, our children are wonderful at pointing out our flaws. They say you say, but you do.

Age does not bring humility, people. Apart from the gracious intervention of God as we grow older, we grow more proud and we begin to think that we have a right to cut certain corners with regard to obedience. What about spiritual leadership in a church? No pastor can say, God I was called as a pastor and therefore I don't have to be as careful. No leader of a conference of a movement can say I don't have to be as careful.

If we will not uphold God's honor by being holy, by treating him as holy, like with Moses, God will uphold his own honor at our expense. And This has happened, hasn't it? Over and over and over. And no other voice can be used as an excuse. You cannot say to God, my pastor said it was okay too.

Well that doesn't matter. What did God say? One voice for the Christian, one master, not a thousand, one. It's so freeing. One voice.

No child can say to God, my parents said, no wife can say, my husband said, what has the Lord said to us? We will never find shelter from God's displeasure by saying to him that somebody else said something different than him. In the 19th century revivals in Scotland there was a pastor named Andrew Bonar, friend of Robert Murray McShane. I hope you know those two names, wonderful men. There's books that you can get on their lives.

Bonar was talking to the churches and he said this, What lies at the root of our little success is our little holiness. McShane said, it's not great talents God blesses so much as what? His holiness was Christlikeness. And his personal prayer as a young man, He died very young, was this, God make me as holy as a saved sinner can be. Now the prophet brought the right message, he had the right doctrine, but he failed in the life.

His life misrepresented God. The method is part of the sermon, isn't it? Always. Will God use a group of people whose hearts embrace idolatry secretly to turn a nation back from its open idolatry. The world is tired of American evangelicals publicly railing against the culture for its idolatry while at the same time we have the same heart idols as they have, the difference is of course is that ours are secret.

They know that we are like them when things happen in our family, when we're not treated fairly. We respond like they do when things happen in church. We respond like they do. When we have money in our hands, we respond like they do. When we have time where we're at leisure, our thoughts go to the same kind of things their thoughts go to.

They know we're like them and so they've quit listening. Now here's a warning for us. If your idol is the family, I'm not saying it is, but I've met many people who are part of family integrated churches who I would, if I was in their church, I'd go to a different church because there's a hardness and there's an arrogance. I'm a homeschooler, alright, and I meet a lot of homeschoolers that think that if you're not homeschooled you can't get into heaven and if you have been homeschooled and you've been raised in a family integrated church, especially one that has pretty good doctrine, there is no possibility your children won't all be in heaven. It is just taken for granted that they are all regenerate.

I've had children come to my church and they say to the other children, when there was a Bible study on divorce, we were going through a passage and having to mention divorce, They said to the other children, we don't know any divorced people. We don't know people like that. We're homeschooled. I'm thinking you do know divorced people, but your parents just haven't told you. If you try to fix the idolatry of America, if you try to fix the idolatry of American evangelicalism with a God that is family centered, then you have only invented a new idol.

Now I know that you're warned about that, but listen, it's not on paper that we do it. It's in practice. What thrills you about Christ? That He is useful to make your children have excellent lives, to protect your marriage? Or is Christ himself the great treasure?

And yes there's wonderful application to our families. If people come to your church and you are using God as a cosmic butler to serve your family They know you're no different than them because they would like to come to your church and use God too. They just have a different thing they want from God. So be careful. Guard ourselves.

By the way, when we talk about holiness, what are we talking about? Not talking about a group of people that are really intense about rules. There are rules in holiness. There are laws. What is holiness?

It is being called from the grave, from a jail, a prison of sin, out into the open to walk as near the king as possible the rest of our days, To enjoy the sweetest intimacy with the uncreated God and to be so captivated by His superior attractions that sin really seems to us a very uninteresting option. There is something really ugly about conservative religion, But there is something beautiful about real holiness. You know the story of Hudson Taylor? When he was at the end of his life and they were gathering, The biographers were gathering tidbits on his life. That two volume on Hudson Taylor.

One of the things that one of his lifelong friends said about him was this. He said Hudson Taylor, There was a life that bore looking into. Do you have a life that could bear looking into? One of the 18th century revivalists named John Barrage in England, greatly used of the Lord, we don't generally know his name, He wrote a book called Cheerful Piety, that is a happy holiness. That's what we're wanting.

Well finally, one more life. The young prophet failed but there is someone who didn't fail and that's Asa, 2 Kings 14. Asa is the grandson of Rehoboam, the great-grandson of Solomon and the great-great-grandson of David. His grandfather Rehoboam we know was half-hearted. Then his father Rehoboam's son was even worse But when Asa takes the throne he, as a young man, has set his heart to seek the Lord.

You can Divide the life of Asa into two great periods, early reforms and later reforms. In 2 Chronicles chapter 14 you find the early reforms. He begins to deal with the idolatry of the land. He begins to reform the land and set the people back to seek the Lord. And God is very pleased with Asa, but there's a problem.

An Ethiopian army with a million soldiers rises up and it's marching on Judah and Asa seeks the Lord and he says to God, it's no problem with you to rescue the strong or to rescue the weak. I mean, you're infinite. And God hears the prayer of Asa and God hands over the enormous army of the Ethiopians into the hands of the people of Judah. And chapter 15 opens with the armies of Judah coming back and the news is this. God has heard our prayers.

God has delivered us from the Ethiopians. All your fears are gone now and not only that, we've looted the Ethiopians and we're coming back loaded down and God sends a prophet, Azariah the son of Oded. Look at 2 Chronicles 15 one, the spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded and he went out to meet Asa and he said to him, hear me Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you while you are with him. If you seek him he will be found by you but if you forsake him he will forsake you.

For a long time Israel has been without the true God, without a teaching priest and without law. But when in their trouble they turned to the Lord God of Israel and sought Him, He was found by them. And in those times there was no peace to the one who went out nor to the one who came in, but great turmoil was on all the inhabitants of the lands. So nation was destroyed by nation and city by city, for God troubled them with every adversity but you. Be strong.

Do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded." Wonderful reminder. This begins the second period of Asa's rule. The second period of reform. Asa listens to the prophet and the prophet's message is simple, isn't it? This is a good thing you've done.

You've come a long way, but Asa, it's no place to stop. And that is a word that is helpful for people like us. If you've come to Christ, Conversion is a wonderful beginning. It's the opening of the gate. It's the running to Christ.

It's the beginning of life. But it's no place to stop. It's just a start. If you're raising children and your children are well behaved, It's a wonderful thing, but it's no place to stop. The goal is perfect conformity to Christ.

If your church has become family integrated and careful, That's a good start, but it's no place to stop. As we grow older, the temptation to settle down and to coast in is a constant thing. Look, youthful enthusiasm is gone. What are you going to run on? When I was in my 20s, I was tempted to many things, but I was never tempted to complacency.

I was never tempted by the thought of a secure, comfortable life. To me, that was boredom, complete boredom. I wanted adventure and cutting edge, but I'm 45 now, and I don't do anything in the ministry fueled by youthful enthusiasm any longer. It's all dried up. So either I love God and I keep on because I love the Lord or I give in to the temptation that faces me every morning and that is this I pastor a church that's kind to me why not just settle down why not stop here it's easy to become complacent when we're middle aged Look at the warnings that the prophet gives him that helps Asa complete the task.

Number one, don't forget spiritual realities. That is, God is with you while you seek Him but Asa if you forsake God He will forsake you. We are not talking about losing your salvation. We're talking about that wonderful awareness of the work of God, of His hands stretched out toward you, working. We must never forget that if at any point we decide that we don't need God, we can look forward to a religion, to a church that God doesn't attend.

The second thing he said is remember the bad old days. We talk about the good old days, he's talking about the battle days. Remember, there's already been a great reform set in motion and so God says to Asa through the prophet, remember before you turned your heart back to the Lord as a nation, do you remember how bad it was? And many of you are in healthy churches now, Many of you are surrounded by earnest believers and the Lord has worked graciously and you can say to yourself, remember the bad old days. Remember when I went to church and it was nothing but a circus.

Remember when it was all entertainment. Remember when no one pointed me to the Lord. Remember those days. Do not stop now. There's more work to be done and there is more of God to be enjoyed.

Now what is the effect of this? Well, Asa picks up his pace and he leads the entire nation. It says all of Judah was united they sought the Lord with one voice one heart and the reforms continue but not just in Judah. If we read in other places everywhere that Asa has spread his rule a little beyond the borders of Judah because he's a strong king and God has blessed him and his armies have taken some other territories and everywhere that Asa's armies are planted, they too are now required to put away their idols and not only that but we read in this passage that once again people to the north where the golden calves are being worshiped, 20 years after Jeroboam became king and introduced the golden calves, 20 years of golden calf worship and now there is a king in Judah that seeks the Lord. And once again people pay a terrible cost.

They leave home and friends and move south. But what's the result? This time the Bible says that the Lord let them find him. And God draws near in one of the great examples of an Old Testament reformation, a wonderful revival what the old writers called a season of grace. How do we apply that to ourselves?

Well are we going to be the ray of Boam or the Asa? When people come to your church do they find that you have gotten rid of a lot of silly things but you don't have God. And you're okay with being known by what you don't have. People come to the church I pastor and come for what we don't have. They say do you have a rock band?

They say No we don't have a rock band. Good. Tired of rock bands. You have a youth group, pizza parties, sleepovers. Well I said no really we don't have a youth group.

Well good, tired of youth groups. Do you have this, do you have this, Do you have this? No, no, no. Ah, well then we're coming here. It's a fine starting place but it's a terrible reason to stay.

We want people to come for what we have. We have Him. Him. Anyone in the world can get rid of things. You don't have to be a Christian to get rid of things.

But only the believer can set his face to God, and God lets him find him. And that extraordinary privilege of the nearness of God as we gather together is ours. So do they find you to be an Asa or a Rehoboam? You've got a good start. You don't think this is a good place to stop though do you?

Surely not. All my children look good, my church looks good, is this a place to stop? No. We are to pursue Him all the way to the end. What will keep a people pursuing God?

Well, the same things that kept Asa pursuing God. For you. Remember God's ways. He is only with us. He's only with us in that wonderful way as we walk humbly with Him.

He will not draw near to a church of arrogant people. He will not draw near to a self-satisfied group of people that think of Him as a wonderful extra. So He is with us as we seek Him. Remember the bad old days. Remember that there's more to be had.

Now don't let anything discourage you. You have had a hard year. Events that break your heart, friends that have broken your heart, not just big events that make news and sin that breaks your heart, but all of us in our homes and our extended families and our churches there's enough that happens in a week in my life to make me want to quit Don't quit why not? The enemy often comes and gives us this lie, and then we're finished. He says to us things like this.

You know the Lord will He does restore people He does revive churches, but you've got to be 100%. You've got to be 100%. And your church has to be 100%. But listen, you're never 100%. We are still sinners and no matter how often we run the old lovers out the back door they seem to want to climb in the windows.

So we go to the Lord and we say to Him when we are able to say this honestly, oh God I long to be 100% but I cannot say to you revive me because I deserve it because I'm 100%. I'm coming to you because I have no plan B. You are my only hope for the honor of your son, work. Asa was not 100%. I mean he was a wholehearted guy but he wasn't sinless.

If we continue to read his life we find that he drifts at the end as well. But God knows Asa is going to drift and He doesn't say to Asa, Asa I know that you're going to drift. I know that you're not 100 percent. I know that while you are a believer you're not a perfect believer and you don't deserve revival so I'm not going to bring revival. The Lord does not wait for people who are perfect but there must be a real desperation.

There must be an earnestness in our pleading. God was merciful to Asa even though he knew he would be very flawed. God is merciful to the people. Asa's mother, the Queen Mum, right, she she has her own little idol in the back. Asa grinds it up and throws it into a river but he doesn't put her to death and she should have been put to death.

The Bible says that although Asa pressed this reformation with his whole heart, there's still places in the country where people had their idols. Little places out in the woods, little homes with back rooms. Does God wait until all of Judah is 100% idol free? No, He doesn't. The history of the church is this, that when a people set their heart to seek the Lord, God does not wait for everybody.

Sometimes it is just a wonderful remnant. Now, my last warning is this, beware of enthusiasm. You say well what's wrong with enthusiasm? I don't mean modern enthusiasm, I mean the old word enthusiasm. John Wesley warned people in the day of the Great Awakening against enthusiasm.

Here's what we mean. In the 18th century, the word enthusiasm meant fanaticism, that is really a religion of your imagination, not the religion of the Bible, a religion where you just follow your feelings. And Wesley said, look, the death of any hope of revival, of God drawing near of us walking with the Lord, is that we become enthusiasts or we become fanatics. And this is how he defined this spiritual fanaticism, desiring the goal but not choosing the steps that God has given us that lead to the goal. We are all tempted to be fanatics.

We come to a conference, people preach, our hearts are filled, we're warmed, we say to the Lord earnestly, honestly God we want that kind of life, we want the nearness of the living God, we want to be used by you to turn a people back to you And then there are the steps like Asa had in front of him. But if we're fanatics, we ignore the steps and we just have the prayer meeting. Don't be a fanatic. Put away the adjusted God of Rehoboam. Put to death the half measures of Jeroboam, put to death the half measures of Rehoboam.

Don't let them have any place in your life. Put away the moral compromise of the young prophet and set your face to seek Him until you find Him. Let's pray. Our Father, we set our hearts toward you. We have no other place to look.

We don't come to this weekend because we are particularly spiritual and strong people. We come because God we are a needy people. We are as needy at this moment as the first moment we cried out to you and found you merciful. And so because of the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ we pray that you would turn your face toward us this weekend and meet us at the mercy seat and do not leave us where you find us but God work in us. We plead that this weekend might be a day of such everlasting value that we can look back and say that that was a time in my life where there was a fair meeting between Christ and my soul.

We ask it in His name. John, thank you. I really I was so grateful for that message. We have a couple of minutes just for some interaction. And so I thought I'd keep John up here for a second.

And if there are any questions or any thoughts anybody might have I'd love to to field those now You just raise your hand and I'll point out and you stand up that's how it'll work I don't think we have a microphone to to pass around so we have to speak up real loud when you do real loud when you do. Right, so the question is are there parallels from the history of Wales with our own day? I think there are wonderful parallels. There were many waves of revival in Wales. Some were citywide, some churchwide, countywide, some nationwide.

Some historians have counted 19 from 1735 to 1904. Most of us think of the 04 revival when we think of the Welsh revival. That was actually not the best, not the healthiest, not the longest lasting. From 713-35 to the end of the 18th century there, there were three great waves and those were the ones that I was studying. One lesson we learn is this, God passed over amazingly the proud but doctrinally correct denominations and chose to use the worst of churches to turn the land.

I mean The Anglican church in the 18th century wasn't the healthiest church. Its doctrine wasn't the clearest doctrine. Its discipline was weak. The Baptists were there. The Presbyterians were far off.

The Congregationalists were there. And while they benefited from the Great Awakening, if we read the early accounts, it is not those theologically careful people. It was the church that wasn't known for careful theology and God raised up out of that church a George Whitfield, a John Wesley. He raised up in Wales men named Daniel Rowland, Hal Harris, William Williams. Now when they were raised up, they had no idea of good theology.

All they had was kind of church service. They went to church, they saw the beautiful rituals of the Anglican Church, they had a catechism, but they were pretty clueless. And so Whitfield says that when he was saved he talked to other ministers and he said to them, I've had my sins forgiven, and the other ministers would say to him, I don't know what you're talking about. I've been born again. I've gone through this extraordinary experience of conversion and the ministers in this church said to him, we don't know what you're talking about.

You don't need that kind of a thing. So what happened was the young men turned back to the Puritan writings. Puritans have been dead for 50 years and they began to read men like John Owen and John Flavell and John Bunyan. The Welsh people were very ignorant, only 10% could read at the beginning of the century and many of them memorized Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress And so preachers had the entire book memorized. So one lesson for us is this, we don't have many good modern patterns to follow.

Many of us, We feel like we're kind of pioneering some things again. And there are wonderful resources and some of you in this room are part of that. There are many wonderful resources that are now available that weren't available 20 years ago. But my suggestion is we do need to read the older guys because they already, we don't have to reinvent the wheel, they know what it was to seek the Lord and they know what it was to be careful with church and family. So we can, like those men, we can read.

The other thing is this, in Wales a man named Griffith Jones in the early 1720s, he was a pastor and he was a very godly man in the Anglican Church and he began to send out young preachers as school teachers and they would travel throughout the nation to teach people how to read. I told you only 10% could read. And they taught people to read through Bibles and catechisms. So everyone that knew how to read in Wales, generally speaking, by the time the Great Awakening started, what they call the Evangelical revival, by the time George Whitefield shows up in your town and preaches with such extraordinary effectiveness, you are a group of people who learned to read and the only thing you've ever read is the Bible. You see the way the Lord prepared it.

We want to read the old writers but nothing, nothing can substitute for the book. So really it's a very encouraging thing. The other thing that's encouraging is they made a whole slew of mistakes. One man in Wales, Hal Harris, which was mighty, he was a mightily used man, he was really the spearhead of the Welsh revival and became friends with George Whitfield. Hal Harris tended to lean on his own personal impressions.

So one time he records headed to preach headed out to preach at a certain town and as he reaches a Fork in the road a bird lands on the fence post and faces the opposite direction of the town He was going to go to so he thinks to himself God's telling me I go this way instead so he doesn't show up and preach. He goes somewhere else and preaches. Now Hal Harris wasn't careful. He didn't guard his emotions like that. Later in life there was a woman who he considered a prophetess and when she traveled with him she was married to another man he was married to another woman there wasn't adultery but when he traveled with her he felt that she helped him.

George Whitfield and the other men got Hal Harris and said to him what are you doing you are bringing such disrepute on the movement people think that all this movement is is a bunch of 20 year old preachers and 20 year old girls interested in 20 year old preachers they're already saying this kind of thing And now you're traveling with the married woman and the married woman's husband said that he was going to kill how Harris we didn't quit traveling with his wife How Harris would not listen to them he continued to do he said no God told me to do this How Harris was disciplined by the churches that he planted He was put out The woman died and it was 12 years before Hal Harris really dealt with that and came back to the movement and was used by the Lord again. They made so many mistakes And yet it was a century of extraordinary revival. John Wesley, the Armenian, of course, didn't really preach in Wales. He didn't send his preachers to Wales because Wales was covered up with other good preachers, the Welshman and George Whitfield too, the Englishman, and they were all Calvinistic.

And so Wesley realized there was no use going over there and now John Wesley was bitterly opposed to Calvinism or the doctrines of grace or Reformed theology. Listen to what John Wesley said about Wales. He said at the end of the century before he died in the 1780s, he said this, Wales is the most primitive, meaning New Testament like people I have ever seen. And yet they were Calvinists. So it was hard for John Wesley to compliment him.

When he went to Scotland, he didn't say anything nice about Scotland. He said, they love hearing sermons, they don't like to do anything about them. But for the Welsh, he said they're the most New Testament-like people. It's a wonderful account. By the way, if you want to read on that, Arnold Dallimore's two-volume biography on George Whitefield covers the life of Whitefield, but it covers all the areas and connects all the dots between England, Scotland, Wales, and America, and the leaders in each of those.

So that'd be a good place to start.