Word & the Wild

[00:00:00] This is Word and the Wild. It's a one year Bible adventure with friends. My name is Owen. I'm your host and your guide, and together we are on this 12 month journey as a podcast plus community where we read the Bible for ourselves, but not by ourselves. This week, week 24, we are kicking off the next.

[00:00:28] Binge-worthy season of our epic adventure, civil War tears Israel apart and shows us what the next generation of kings are made of. And God's one and only measure of their success. So hello and welcome in. We are having a blast rolling through this journey together. This is not some recap where we feed you bite sized bits of the Bible.

[00:00:57] No, no. This is a freewheeling walk where we watch the story of the Bible unfold, like the epic movie that it. Is so subscribe here on your favorite podcast platform and share it with a friend. It's more fun when we got more people with us. I wanna say a special welcome now to our word and the Wild plus community members.

[00:01:21] Hey gang, your support of this nonprofit endeavor is what makes space for all of us here on this Bible reading adventure. So thank you so much. They enjoy access to our private, safe online space. Where no honest question is, a dumb question along with weekly livestream, q and as, bonus content, articles, interactions, meetups, and more.

[00:01:45] If any of that sounds like something you would like to be part of, now it's a great time to jump in. Check the show notes for how to become a member yourself, or get all the details over at Word and the wild.com. That's Word and the wild.com. Well, my friend. Enough set up. Let's jump in. Let's get you set up for this week, this epic new season of the Bible's unfolding story.

[00:02:21] Yes. Welcome to a new season of the Epic story of the Bible. Let's call this season a house divided. And as we step into this new season, the story is picking up the pace. Last season time really slowed down, I mean, way down to allow us to get this detailed view a detailed biography of the first three kings of Israel, Saul, David, and then finally his son, Solomon, where we've been the last few weeks.

[00:02:53] And when I say detailed, I'm saying we got it all, right? The full workup. We saw their lives all the way from their family of origin to the point of their death. We saw them in the battlefield. We saw them like it or not, in the bedroom, and we got an intimate view of the interior of their lives as well.

[00:03:16] Not just their, their actions. But on the inside, how they thought, what they prayed when no one else was around, what they loved and what they longed for. And while we've enjoyed many memorable moments. Unforgettable. Some inspiring, some stomach turning.

[00:03:36] Now, if we step back and look for some major themes that reach across the lives of Saul and David and Solomon, and now run through this new season in the story that takes us through the long Israelites Civil War...

[00:03:52] if we look for those themes, there's one theme in particular that becomes crystal clear to me.

[00:04:00] And that is for God's people success as a person and as a nation is tied to the condition of their king's heart.

[00:04:13] The heart. It has been the determining factor in the Bible's measure of these kings. As Solomon himself wrote in Proverbs 4: 23, he said, "Your heart determines the course of your life."

[00:04:29] In other words, you are what you love.

[00:04:34] Solomon discovered just how true that statement is, didn't he? Tragically so. And each of these kings that we are watching here as our story unfolds, makes that discovery one way or another either joyfully or tragically.

[00:04:52] For example, think of Saul.

[00:04:54] Let's go back a little bit. Think of Saul. Saul, lots of promise. Everybody wants him to be king, but he turns out to be an insecure leader who valued what people thought of him above all else, and as a result, God rejected him as king. His heart didn't make the cut. Then you look at David. David loved God with strength and just a simplicity that's refreshing as a young man.

[00:05:22] Yes, he made horrifying choices that haunted him for life. Yet time and again, he returned to restore his relationship with God. In fact, he comes to be known as a man after God's own heart, and he becomes the standard going forward all the way into the future.

[00:05:42] He's the gold standard. And then you look at Solomon, right? We again, just spent time with Solomon the last couple of weeks. He starts out fairly strong, but his love of wealth, women and pleasure, it pulls him away from a life of friendship with God in the end. And so he goes to his grave knowing that he is a failure as a king because his heart wandered away. And that's the tragic, bittersweet note that he hits at the end of his life in the book of Ecclesiastes, right?

[00:06:16] And so now here as we start this new season of our epic story, this house divided season, we start to pick up the pace. We zip through a number of other kings that follow after Solomon. You got Rehaboam, Jeroboam, Asa, Baasha, Ziri, Omri, Ahab, Jehoshaphat, and on and on it goes. Some of these kings, they only get a passing mention, you know, a paragraph. A sentence or two.

[00:06:42] Each and every one has their entire life and reign as king boiled down into a single, simple evaluation. Are they a good king who makes their relationship with God their priority? Or are they an evil king who does their own thing?

[00:07:05] The whatever they build, wherever they march, whoever they rule, that's all secondary.

[00:07:13] For the Bible and the story of the Bible, it all starts and ends with the heart.

[00:07:21] This echoes the, the simple, powerful statement God made to the prophet Samuel, way back. Remember Samuel? Yeah. He was the, the man in the middle between the time of the judges and the first kings of Israel, and, and he was the one who anointed Saul as king.

[00:07:37] Remember all this? Then later he anointed David. Now, remember when Samuel was there at David's house? He was, he was looking for the next king to anoint, and God had led him there. And, and Samuel sees David's older brother and, and his older brother, man, he looked the part of the King. Samuel was impressed.

[00:08:00] But remember this, remember what God told Samuel. God said, "Don't judge by his appearance or height. For I have rejected him. The Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

[00:08:22] Isn't that just how we do things as people? I mean, so much of our time and energy goes into projecting an image of success. Where we live. What we wear. What we drive. Who we know.

[00:08:38] It's all outward appearances. We work out, we stress out. We act out all to project some kind of image to gain acceptance and gain respect. Yeah, but from God's perspective, all that is just a footnote in the story of our lives. People see externals first and make their evaluation, but for God. The headline is My heart.

[00:09:07] And Your Heart and heart isn't about being nice or being ethical or having good intentions.

[00:09:15] When God is looking at the heart, he's drilling down to the foundational motives that drive our decisions and set our identity.

[00:09:25] Oh, take Solomon for example. He's the classic example. If ever there were a guy who could impress everybody in the neighborhood at a backyard barbecue it's Solomon.

[00:09:35] Wealth, women wisdom, Solomon built and bargained and bullied. He was the original author of The Art of the Deal, the Final Verdict from God. However. Oh man. Just direct and devastating.

[00:09:51] Listen to what God has to say, summing up King Solomon's entire, wildly successful life. It says,

[00:10:03] "King Solomon loved many foreign women. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel. You must not marry them because they will turn your hearts. To their gods. Yet Solomon insisted on loving them Anyway, he had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. In fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord. It goes on to say the Lord was very angry with Solomon, for his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.

[00:10:41] He had warned Solomon specifically about worshiping other gods, but Solomon did not listen to the Lord's command. So now the Lord said to him, since you have not kept my covenant and have disobeyed my decrees, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants."

[00:11:06] All of Solomon's success... and there it is, boils down to that. See, it was God in the end who divided the kingdom of Israel because Solomon lived his life with a divided heart.

[00:11:20] This week we will walk through a gallery of statues. That's how I see it. Each one, a leader of God's people. Each one a king. And each one evaluated in the end by nothing more or less than their heart.

[00:11:38] So look for that. What did they want? What motives drove their decisions? What desires wrote their identity? Their wealth and power may have fooled their entourage or impressed their enemies, but God was not impressed. He sees right through it all, all the way down to their hearts. That is his one and only measure of success.

[00:12:06] And as our story moves forward, look for that and we're going to see that kings aren't the only ones who face this pass fail evaluation of the heart. It's how God looks at every single person.

[00:12:23] And just like that you are set to launch into this new season. I am so grateful to get to do this with you. If you're having fun in our one year Bible adventure, hey, let me know. And love to hear from you. And why don't you share it with a friend too. So make sure you have subscribed and then pass this on along to somebody you know and have a fun conversation with them about it too.

[00:12:47] All you word in the wild plus community members? Hey, once again, special thanks for you and your financial support of this nonprofit endeavor. You guys are the real ones. I'll be seeing you out there in the wild this week. That's our private online community space. Hey, word and the Wild is a LineHouse community.

[00:13:04] It's part of the LineHouse Community Network. It's a nonprofit organization with a mission to bring neighbors together to promote awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the Bible because friendship. And God's word, change lives and change cities Word and the wild is presented by the LumiVoz Podcast Network.

[00:13:27] Thank you for your support. My friends at LumiVoz. And with that. We are out. Once again, I'm Owen, your host and your guide, and until next time, I'll be looking to see you out there on the trail, in the word and the wild. Have a great week.