The Ripple Effect of Discipline
This week, Pastor Gene talks about discipline as we continue looking at the account of David in 1 Kings and 1 Chronicles.
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I once heard a story of a boy who was spoiled His father gave him everything he asked for and never disciplined him at any time One day they were fishing and the boy noticed another boy with a toy boat He told his father, “I want a boat!” So, sure enough, his father gave him a boat So the next week, they were at the lake and the father gave the boy some instructions You should tie a string to it so that it doesn’t go too far out on the lake He left the boy with the boat and went over to a nearby bench and started looking at his phone – that’s how we parent nowadays … Sure enough the boy didn’t listen to his father and just put the boat in the water It was fun at first, until The boat started going out too far … The boy started yelling, “Hey, my boat, help me get my boat!” The father was busy on his phone and ignored him. The boat saw an old man about 50 feet or so away So the boy called out, “Get my boat!” The old man looked at the boy, looked at the boat … Then reached down, picked up a handful of rocks And started throwing them toward the boat The boy yelled, “Hey! I said get my boat, not sink it! Stop!” Then he cried to his father, “The old man is trying to sink my boat!” So the father finally put his phone down and approached the old man. From the boy’s perspective, this is what he saw The father approached the old man Looked at the boat, looked at the old man … Didn’t say anything and just walked back toward the boy. When the father got closer, the boy noticed his father was smiling The boy said, “Hey, you didn’t say anything!!!” You see the boy was looking at the old man so intently that he didn’t notice the boat had come back to the shore You see, from the boy’s perspective, it looked like the old man was throwing rocks at the boat But the old man wasn’t, he was throwing the rocks just beyond the boat So that the ripples created by the rocks Would send the boat back to the shore It’s all about perspective so we're going to talk about first chronicles so last week we heard from keith patman wycliffe wycliffe bible translators really interesting you can go back and watch the bible study online and just a note to the sound people yes we are streaming live it's probably me dustin i almost ripped the mic off my head today so i had a little incident this morning where these wires caught on a door handle was not fun all right so we're rolling with it the week before that we were continuing in our series the rest of the story if you're new this is where we're looking you know the entire bible the whole thing all the accounts that a lot of people normally leave out if you've been in church for a long time you might have done a series called the story and if you did and you thought you went through the whole bible you didn't they leave a lot out so we're looking at all of that stuff the whole thing and we're seeing that it's important and it all kind of connects here so last week well not last week the week before last week we saw the account of david's census his pride had caused him to take a census unnecessarily so he was boasting about his own achievements instead of boasting about the lord the other thing that we saw is that some of these accounts run parallel there's 66 books in the protestant canon of the bible more in other denominations we can get to that at bible study but some of them recall the same accounts as others but they're not always in chronological order the bible does not work that way so it gets really confusing and what i'm trying to do is put this kind of back together for you so i made it sharp last week and some people said it was helpful so i made another chart i don't have the mic in my hand in that picture so this is kind of how it works first chronicles comes later first kings is before that so you kind of got to jump around and we can see here there's a big whole bunch of chapters that come before they're actually happening before first kings but in the bible they're after and this is why it can be very very confusing so i'm going to try to put this together for you and hopefully it'll make a little bit more sense so two weeks ago david's punishment for his pride was the plague there was a plague and we saw that the death angel was over aruna the jebusites threshing floor if you don't know what a threshing floor is i'm not going to explain it again this week i did it already last week so that's a theme today i'm not repeating myself so death angel's there god says stop that's enough that sight will become the site of the temple and that's where we are at today so we'll hop right into first chronicles 22 starting at verse 1. then david said this will be the location of the temple of the lord god and the place of the altar for israel's burnt offerings so david gave orders to call together the foreigners living in israel and he assigned them the task of preparing finished stone for the building of the temple of god david provided large amounts of iron for the nails that would be needed for the doors and the gates and for the clamps and he gave more bronze than could be weighed he also provided innumerable cedar logs for the men of tyre and sidon had brought vast amounts of cedar to david david said my son solomon is still young and inexperienced and since the temple to be built for the lord must be a magnificent structure famous and glorious throughout the world i will begin making preparations for it now so david collected vast amounts of building material before his death then david sent for his son solomon and instructed him to build the temple for the lord the god of israel separated this out because i want you to see a key verse first chronicles 22 7 my son is talking to solomon i wanted to build a temple to honor the name of the lord my god david told him but the lord said to me you have killed many men in battles you have fought and since you have shed so much blood in my sight you will not be the one to build a temple to honor my name key verse i wanted to build the temple but the lord said no so this is another form of discipline over david for some of the things that he has done now i'm going to summarize a little we'll get that chart back up yep if we continue in first chronicles this can be a little monotonous for people because it's a lot of names of different people and all kinds of different things so i'm going to summarize that for you there's another place in the bible like numbers where people sometimes quit they give up so chapter 23 we have the duties of the levites the levites are like temple servants there's a lot of them 38 000 of them the duties of the priests in 24 they rotate so it talks about the rotations chapter 25 duties of the musicians of note asaph nobody talks about asaph but asaph writes quite a few psalms i think 11 of the psalms he writes so nobody reads those little like introductory things above the psalm they leave that out but it gives you important information including when they're being written and what they're being written about chapter 26 gatekeepers and other officials chapter 27 israel's military of note ben aya he's going to be important as we continue in the rest of the story stuff that people don't normally hear anything about when we get to chapter 28 we see david's charge to israel and the affirmation of solomon first chronicles 28 starting at verse 1 david summoned all the officials of israel to jerusalem the leaders of the tribes the commanders of the army divisions the other generals and captains the overseers of the royal property and livestock the palace officials the mighty men and all the other brave warriors in the kingdom a lot of people keep that in mind david rose to his feet and said my brothers and my people it was my desire to build a temple where the ark of the lord's covenant god's footstool could rest permanently i made the necessary preparations for building it but god said to me you must not build a temple to honor my name for you are a warrior and have shed much blood so we're getting redundant here yet the lord the god of israel has chosen me from all my father's family to be king over israel forever for he has chosen the tribe of judah to rule and from among the families of judah he chose my father's family and from among my father's sons the lord was pleased to make me king over all israel and from among my sons for the lord has given me many he has chosen solomon to succeed me on the throne of israel and to rule over the lord's kingdom he said to me your son solomon will build my temple and its courtyards for i have chosen him as my son and i will be his father and if he continues to obey my commands and regulations as he does now i will make his kingdom last forever if we continue in chapter 28 we see a pattern for the temple david says it was given to him by the hand of the lord offerings for the temple of note it's kind of interesting it's a lot of money there's it is a big big building project so what i did was i took all the tons of gold i want to know how much it would be worth i put it in like a calculator and if it's reliable it's 15 billion 600 million dollars 15 billion dollars it's a big project very very expensive so this is just huge to give you the gravity and probably why so many chapters of the bible are dedicated to all the different details if we continue we have david's prayer of thanks for the tape for the temple and then the death of david but wait we have to go to first kings and that is why we're inserting that in between the death of david and these prep preparations and proclamation and it becomes really important it's a it's a reason why you really need to read both of the accounts at the same time because you get a little bit of extra information and other things make sense if you just started at first kings and you read this account about what david's son adonisia does it might not have the same gravity as it would if you read first chronicles first so keep in mind what david did all the different things that he said who he's talking to we're gonna hop over to first kings first kings 1 1 king david was now very old and no matter how many blankets covered him he could not keep warm so his advisers told him let's find a young version to wait on you and look after you my lord she will lie in your arms and keep you warm so they searched throughout the land of israel for a beautiful girl and they found abhishek from shum and brought her to the king the girl was very beautiful and she looked after the king and took care of him but the king had no sexual relations with her we've talked about this in this series polygamy was a thing back then we just got to deal with it so you have wives primary wives you also have concubines they're kind of like secondary wives keep this girl in mind now it's important to explain david's sons because here's what's going to happen here another power struggle he has a song amnon amnon he kids in the world raped tamar his daughter not good his son absalom kills him in revenge for it then absalom stages a rebellion and then joab david's general kills him so david's already lost two of his sons there's another son in the middle nobody talks about but we really don't know much about him daniel perhaps anyway if we keep moving along the next one in line in succession to the throne is adenisia you have to keep this in mind so enter adenaja into the scene and here's what happens first kings 1 5. about that time david's son adonijah whose mother was haggeth began boasting i will make myself king so he provided himself with chariots and charioteers and recruited 50 men to run in front of him now his father king david had never disciplined him at any time even asking why are you doing that adenisia had been born next after absalom and he was very handsome so now we have another rebellion being staged and it gets really bad because there's a split between his leadership his generals his prophets or priests very bad so he gets this time joab to side with him says david's general he's up to no good a lot but he's never done this before so adonaija gets joab to side with him and abiathar abayathar's the priest he rescued from doug the edomite when he killed all the priests so he should be grateful so should joab they should both be dead well they go with his son adenisia again really tragic and sad but there's another priest zadok we learned about him he doesn't agree neither does the prophet nathan they stay on david's side so here's what happens nathan approaches bathsheba she's the one that david had the affair with nathan's the prophet who rebuked him after they did it going on adenisia has staged a rebellion now she's not adonaija's mom different mom you better take care of this you better go talk to david david doesn't know if you value your life and your son's life you're gonna approach david about this this is a big deal so here's what you do you go and tell him remind him of the vow his responsibilities and then i'll come in at a key time and validate it and so that's what happens so she very formally goes before david says remember the vow when you die if atoniza takes over we're going to be treated as criminals nathan comes in validates the account and he says okay make solomon king. fantastic so they do just that nathan the prophet also important figure again benaya he's guarding them as they go down they anoint solomon king along with zadok they blow the ram's horn proclaim his kingship now we have the other camp involved they're feasting and partying celebrating adonijah's kingship they made him king too at the same time well they hear all the celebrating in fact they arrive back at jerusalem and there's this great procession and it's so loud that they say it makes the earth shake well joab remember the general he's the traitor now hears it and he goes what's that noise at the same time in comes jonathan by athar's son well adani's like well you're a good man you must have good news nope not at all they made solomon king so everybody kind of scatters and they run away and so adonaija does something funny i'll take the time to explain it to you he grabs the horns of the altar it's kind of a strange thing so they don't have the temple yet it's the tabernacle the tent the altar is in there he grabs the horns why you're begging for mercy when you do that you're grabbing the horns of the altar so this is what he does solomon finds out but he forgives him he sends for him forgives him but with a warning if he makes trouble i'm gonna kill him but he doesn't i won't touch a hair on his head all good so now if we turn the page we get to first kings two and it says this at the time of king david's as the time of king david's death approached he gave this charge to his son solomon i am going where everyone on earth must someday go take courage and be a man observe the decrees commands regulation and laws written in the law of moses so that you will be successful in all you do and wherever you go if you do this then the lord will keep the promise he made to me he told me if key word if your descendants live as they should and follow me faithfully with all their heart and soul one of them will always sit on the throne of israel and there's something else joab that general remember he killed my other generals mesa and abner yeah he stained his sandals with their blood it was murder he claimed it was in wartime but no it's murder so don't solomon let him go to the grave in peace remember barzillai now you might not remember when david had to retreat when absalom rebelled he goes even further into the force and man am barzillai was kind to him he's the older man he's probably passed away now but repay his sons with kindness gives this instruction oh yeah remember also during that time when i had to flee from my son absalom remember shimmy a he was the guy cursing me and throwing rocks you're wise man you'll know how to arrange a bloody death for him so this is all kind of david's deathbed instructions to solomon now first chronicles and first kings for a moment will run back into parallel we see the death of david 1st kings 2 10. then david died and was buried with his ancestors in the city of david david had reigned over israel for 40 years seven of them in hebron and 33 in jerusalem solomon became king and sat on the throne of david his father and his kingdom was firmly established first chronicles we're doing it in parallel gives us a little more first chronicles 29 29 all the events of king david's reign from the beginning to the end are written in the record of samuel the seer the record of nathan the prophet and the record of gad the seer these accounts include the mighty deeds of his reign and everything that happened to him and to israel and to all the surrounding kingdoms we've run into this before again it's another area where we see books they're referencing that we don't have we just got to deal with it there are dust now nobody has them we might also put as a side note second samuel 23 in here the last words of david i know i was talking to my wife about it she says i was reading through and it's weird you get chapter 23 of second samuel and you have the last words of david and then he goes and takes the census is he doing that from the grave no again it's another example of the bible not being in chronological order it'll just recount certain things well now david's dead and adenija is still vying for the throne remember solomon's forgiven him but he's still going at it so he approaches his mom bathsheba she's suspicious at first whoa do you come here with good intentions she knows what he's up to he's no good he says yeah but you know that all israel wanted me to be king right but the lord made solomon king right so here's what i'm asking you do for me remember abbashag tell solomon to give her to me as a wife solomon does not react kindly to this at first he's very polite to his mom in fact he gets her another throne when she comes in very respectful to his mom some denominations see this as a pre-figure of mary and jesus because they're both sitting on thrones when they have the conversation to put the picture in your mind a very majestic thing it's like a high court type of situation but solomon loses it he says uh adonijah has sealed his fate with this request he's done he mentions joab and abiathar they're still alive so he's still got him on their side this is very dangerous now again it wasn't his dad's wife per se but it's a concubine it's something close and it would put him in line to the throne probably so solomon no i'm going to have him killed so now you've got to remember ben aya comes back in the picture he's now the new general and solomon's henchmen so to speak so adonaija gets killed beneath kills him adenisia dies now he's going to clean house he's going to secure his kingdom grabs the horns of the altar he knows he's next he's probably going to die so he stays there in the tent then eyes like come on out i got to kill you no i'm going to stay here and just hold the horns of the altar right it goes back into a woman no he's holding the horns of the altar he goes fine kill him there and so he kills him at the altar of the lord sounds bloody but joab kind of deserves it in this case then there's shimya the guy who threw the rocks and cursed david he brings him in he's actually kind of merciful to him but there's something going on here well solomon's quite wise so he says listen he puts him on like kind of a house arrest build a house for yourself here in jerusalem and stay in the city if you do you won't get yourself killed if you leave you die it goes fine at first but then three years later he loses a couple of runaway slaves he goes after them solomon finds out he brings shimier back in and says yo what's the deal and then has been i kill him as well it says so now the kingdom was firmly in solomon's grip what david did had a ripple effect david accomplished a lot there were some things he did right some things he did wrong and god disciplined him david wanted he wanted to build the temple but he shed too much blood god disciplined him for the affair with bathsheba and uriah's murder they lost a child the plague for his pride for taking the temple away we saw that there were some things that david did that solomon had to clean up and some things that david did not do that solomon had to clean up what david failed to do was pass that discipline on to adonisia again another key verse first kings 1 5 about that time david's son adenija whose mother was haggeth began boasting i will make myself king so he provided himself with chariots and chariots tears and recruited 50 men to run in front of him now his father king david had never disciplined him at any time even by asking why are you doing that here's what the bible says about disciplining our children proverbs 13 24 those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children those who love their children care enough to discipline them those are some strong words aren't they hate their children proverbs 23 13-14 don't fail to discipline your children the rod of punishment won't kill them physical discipline may well save them from death proverbs 19 18 discipline your children while there is hope otherwise you will ruin their lives did you catch that you will ruin their lives there is modern parenting and then there is biblical parenting they're different aren't they now i want to make a little disclaimer here about the rod because because what kind of rod pastor gene so there are a few steps before the rod that if you get right you really don't have to use it very much at least in my experience and i will say this i do not advocate for physical abuse in any way shape or form i had the rod used against me or a metal spatula or other tools used against me a spoon let's make a list okay this is not like counseling anyway a lot of different belts and stuff anyway too much it was a little too much if we're being honest right i'm over it don't worry i'm fine but i have to say a little healthy fear helped sometimes those banking was kind of helpful just saying and the bible allows for it so i don't think that the rod of discipline is like you know 439 lashes you know or something like that no but the spanking was healthy but let me just take you back a step there are a couple of things that i think are helpful that if you as a parent get them right you may never have to use the rod the first one we're going to talk about maybe in a couple of weeks is going to be fear we're going to learn something about fear we're going to learn about what the bible says about fear just like parenting it's quite different it's going to shock some of you what the bible says about fear the bible says we should have fear including fear of the lord it's the beginning of all wisdom fear of the lord you know what else it says the wise fear it says cautious in your bible in the proverbs fear in the originals it says fear it says we should fear the king authorities and i think you can translate that into parents a little healthy fear of my dad loved him but feared him here's the other thing especially as it relates to adonisia we cannot give our kids whatever they want whatever they ask for see a lot of that right they cry we give them whatever they want here's the thing that whole thing starts in infancy that's where that starts we become who we are very early on and it's very hard to change it once we develop very young our parents teach us to be who we become and so my mom gave me this advice when we were i was not bringing i hate when people say that we're pregnant no you're not like i said you know that's you don't you did all the work in the fun part and now the woman has to pay for it so anyway we're we're pregnant stop it it's like the we people with the teams i know i'll offend a whole bunch of people we won you did not play the game you can't even run like anyway i this is good anyway but it's the same thing right we were pregnant not pregnant but when she was pregnant and i got her pregnant my parents were old school and they gave me some advice they said look for your sanity's sake there's like this rice formula stuff look like fish food give the baby that before bed and then if she cries check things right have you fed the baby do you need to change a diaper right does it have a temperature the sick burp it i am very good at burping babies because i love sleep so do that if all the boxes get checked off let the baby cry it out yes there are a lot of experienced parents here uh-huh let the baby cry it out because you see we are a bunch of liars what we're a bunch of liars when you got dressed up today right and someone says how you doing you're like great you lied so you're liars right we pretend we get dressed up fancy and stuff but it's it's a mask but we lie from the beginning we're wired that way so what is the baby trying to do to manipulate you right if i cry they give me what i want if i cry and if you don't snuff that out in the beginning you will make a monster i see a lot of older people nodding their head but modern parenting tells us something different have you noticed that and here's an irony this is just crazy to me a lot of these modern parents right that subscribe to all these theories people calling themselves doctors that are not doctors and they do whatever they say there's an irony here that makes me laugh and i have to like hold my fingers back from the keyboard when i see it sometimes they will make fun of other people calling them names like snowflakes they'll make fun of them while at the same time creating them did you notice that it's weird modern parenting makes monsters the success of our society requires discipline and if we really love our children we will discipline them i am my daughter's father not her friend he always turned the mic off and walked that was good so likewise if we scale this out this is how god disciplines us right so now the parents are like oh it's about me yeah yeah you have to deal with the discipline now at any age no matter how old you are it's not over god disciplines us the same way and for the same reason because he loves us that's a good ringer proverbs 3 11 my child don't reject the lord's discipline and don't be upset when he corrects you for the lord corrects those he loves just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights let that soak in likewise he's doing it to us if we look to the best commentary on these verses that we have the best commentary on these old testament verses is the new testament we see what it says regarding godly discipline the letter to the hebrews these are people who are suffering persecution says that in chapter 10 let us know because they're jewish people they've converted to christianity and they're being persecuted for it and so this author's point is what hebrews is all about is to give them encouragement and what he's doing is he's talking about a lot of old testament things and saying how jesus is superior to all of those things as great as that was jesus is superior chapter 11 he talks about people of faith it's the faith chapter and after that chapter 12 remember there's no chapters in the original he continues talking and he says therefore since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith let us strip off every weight that slows us down especially the sin that so easily trips us up and let us run with endurance the race god has set before us how we do this by keeping our eyes on jesus the champion who initiates and perfects our faith because of the joy awaiting him he endured the cross disregarding its shame now he has seated in the place of honor beside god's throne think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people then you won't become weary and give up after all you have not yet given your lives and your struggle against sin and have you forgotten the encouraging words god spoke to you as his children he said my child don't make light of the lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you for the lord disciplines those he loves and he punishes each one he accepts as a child as you endure this divine discipline remember that god is treating you as his own children whoever heard of a child was never disciplined by its father if god doesn't discipline you as he does all his children it means that you are illegitimate and not really his child at all since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us shouldn't we submit even more to the discipline of the father of our spirits and live forever for our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years doing the best they knew how but god's discipline is always good for us so that we might share in his holiness no discipline is enjoyable while it's happening it's painful but afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way now well tangential thing if you're pretty observant you probably noticed where the proverb was quoted but if you're really really observant you probably noticed that it wasn't the same it was a little different and so it's an interesting note here we've been talking about this a lot at bible study if you've ever noticed this you read the new testament and then go back to the old testament and the verse they're quoting is not the same 33 ish of the new testament is old testament quotations a good bible will point that out the reason it's different is because they're not quoting the hebrew version that we i think mistakenly base a lot of bibles on some people are getting it nowadays they will make a note of it lxx in your old testament when you see that in the bottom they're saying oh we had to go to the greek greek version to get that prophecy or that thing that's because the apostles are reading the greek version not the hebrew version and this is pretty remarkable because it's the letter to the hebrews and they're using the greek version so good case for the septuagint if you have questions about that i'll answer them for you can email me sometimes it seems like god is throwing rocks at us sometimes it seems like maybe he's letting someone throw rocks at us but remember what david said when shimya was throwing rocks at him the lord told him to do it perhaps you'll bless me for this it's about attitude and perspective seeing it the right way we often don't understand because we don't have the right perspective like the old man throwing the rocks from our perspective it may look like god is trying to harm us but from his perspective these rocks are just creating ripples leading us back to him ripples of discipline these ripples in the water the rocking of the boat what seems very difficult is for our good the letter to the romans if we get to chapter eight paul's talking about a new life in the spirit and also suffering for the faith like the hebrews were he says this romans 8 18 yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the he will reveal to us later for all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when god will reveal who his children really are if we keep reading and we know that god causes everything to work together for the good of those who love god and are called according to his purpose for them we don't always understand and as i've said in the past we can ask why but we don't always get an answer right away so we have to lean on the truth of god's word and these times of distress trial and suffering for our encouragement and for our hope we must trust that if we are his children that he's working everything out for our good let me pray for you lord i thank you for this church and by church i mean the people in it your body the body of christ encourage them and build them up as they go through trials help them to know that they don't always have to understand but they have to know that you love them and so lord i pray that they'll remember where to place their hope in your eternal blessing in your truth in the word and the promises that lie there within not in the opinions of the world be with us unite us in your spirit and your love as we go out this week so that we can be vehicles of that love of that hope to the world around us i ask this in jesus name amen