August 9, 2020 Northern Kingdom – Israel 1 Kings 15:24-35

I've recently been the victim of my own cleverness; or perhaps, my attempt at cleverness. Those of you who have mowed the church lawn know that it is no easy task. Not only is the lawn large there are steep banks along the roads, the ponds, and the stream. While the commercial Ferris mower we have is an amazing machine and it can handle some touch terrain, I believe just about everyone who’s ever mowed has a story of getting it stuck; and the embarrassing call for help to get it back out. Fortunately no one’s ever sunk it in one of the ponds!

There are lawnmowers made that you can tow behind a little lawn tractor. They can be swung off to the side to let a little lawn tractor mow a wider swath. I’ve long thought it would be great if the church had one. Since we also own a little lawn tractor I thought someone could drive the tractor on a level place and the mower could be towed off to the side and down over the bank. The problem is such mowers aren’t exactly cheap. The lowest cost ones I’ve found run around $1600.

Earlier this year I came across an ad on Craigslist for two of them. Neither ran and they looked to be in pretty rough shape. But the guy wasn’t asking much and I decided to take a look. Now, smart person that I am (or so I tell myself), I took a guess as to what parts would be needed and priced them before I even looked at the mowers. When did go to see the mowers I looked them over what I thought was pretty thoroughly and felt that despite the fact that they were in truly bad shape I could combine the two of them into one good mower. And I could do it with minimal parts and expense.

I was even more proud of myself because I thought I probably wouldn’t have to do a lot of the work. I decided I’d let my son’s Boy Scout troop do it as a service project. It would be a fun project for them and be educational. Plus since being thrifty is part of the scout law it would fit that too. Oh how I can fool myself into thinking I’m wonderful!

So I brought the mowers home and decided to do some preliminary work. I order the couple parts I thought would be needed to get one of the engines running. Two of the parts fit on perfectly. The third, however, the “standard” carburetor, did not. It turned out that the standard part did not fit and I had to buy a special one – which cost four times the amount of the standard one. Ouch.

At that point I decided I’d better make a detailed list of all the other parts I needed before spending any more money. As I made my list I discovered indeed the main parts I knew I needed all along were actually pretty cheap. But there were numerous little adaptors and specialty parts that were expensive.

Now this wasn’t looking so cheap after all. I’d be at the price of buying a good used one by this point.

But I’m undeterred. I have some basic metal working skills and the mowers are pretty straightforward. I decided I’d just buy some generic parts and make some modifications to make them work. So, as I start taking detailed measurements I began to see just how deeply rusted the underside of these mowers really are. There was just no way to combine them and add some generic parts and get a decent mower at a reasonable cost.

Reluctantly I gave up. Last Saturday my son and I took them up to Alpco and sold them for scrap – and as scrap they were worth far less than I paid. Lesson learned… until I forget it!

I give this lengthy introduction because I believe it can give us a framework to understand how the Bible is portraying God as God interacts with the people of Israel.

As a quick summary of the Bible’s story line: God chooses Abraham and says he will make him a great nation. Abraham’s twelve great-grandsons become the root of the twelve tribes of Israel. Those tribes develop and grow after the family moves to Egypt. The Bible’s story line skips centuries but we meet them again as a numerous people but long enslaved in Egypt. God stays true to his promises to Abraham. Moses is sent and empowered to free them, they are led to the Promised Land. God guides them to conquer the Promised Land and God raises up “judges” or leaders for the people when the need arises. But all throughout the people grumble and aren’t happy with God. Quite frankly, they’re a pain. Eventually their complaints take the form of saying they want a king – just like all the other nations have. God reluctantly gives in and raises up Saul as king. Saul disobeys. God raises David as king and this time promises everlasting faithfulness to David’s bloodline as king. But David also messes up. David’s son Solomon messes up as king too. Solomon’s son Rehoboam continues to mess up and the nation divides. Eleven of the twelve tribes reject the Davidic leadership and set off on their own. Those eleven tribes retain the name of Israel. The only tribe remaining under Davidic rule is the tribe of Judah, and that becomes the name of the little remaining nation. We’ll continue the story of Judah next week, but for this week we look just at Israel.

The history of Israel is not pleasant. The passage from 1 Kings we read is typical of the Bible’s description of Israel’s leaders. Kings rise and kings fall. Almost none of them are good or faithful. The incoming king often comes to power by killing the existing king. Then the new king kills all the old king’s descendants. On and on it goes. Some kings rule for a long time. Some for just a couple years. You get the sense that Israel is an unstable nation that is constantly in conflict and never really safe.

Corruption and exploitation appear to have been constant. The rich got richer at the expense of the poor. The leaders make all sorts of deals with surrounding nations and are not faithful to God. It almost becomes a refrain in the Bible as each of the kings is described, “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, walking in the way of his ancestor and in the sin that he caused Israel to commit.”

In the same way I felt like I tried option after option to put together a good mower for church God tries and tries with the people. God is gentle. They don’t seem to care. God is stern. They listen for a little but fall back into old ways all too soon. God sends prophets to them. The prophets usually go to the leadership and proclaim the truth: they are corrupt, they are evil, they are not following God’s will. The prophets warn of destruction in the future if things don’t improve. Some of the most famous prophets in the Bible were focused on Israel; people like: Hosea, Amos, Elijah, and Elisha. You may remember some of the famous stories of Elijah and his conflict with evil King Ahab and his infamous wife Jezebel. But nothing seems to help.

Eventually God decides to just scrap it. The whole idea was great originally. God would work through a chosen people to bring the whole world into better relationship with him. Being the chosen people wasn’t intended to be a prideful thing but an example to the world sort of thing – this is what life is like for those who live according to God’s design. But it didn’t work. As the Bible portrays it God held on and held on, reluctant to give up. But eventually God realizes the lost cause.

In 722 B.C. the kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire. The government was destroyed, the people were dispersed, the religious beliefs seem to have disappeared.

However, God had promised beforehand never to give up on these people. The southern kingdom, the tribe of Judah hangs on. Geographically it was about the size of a county in New York State. And it was just about as powerful; which is to say not powerful at all. Somehow, someway with empires rising and falling around them: Egypt, Assyria, and even to some extent Babylon, the little nation struggled along semi-independent for centuries.

We’ll follow them through and get to their collapse in September. But even then God promises to save a remnant. And indeed God does.

As we read through the kings and the history of these people I hope we can feel God’s desires and struggles. In Isaiah 65:2 God says, “I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices…”

Eventually this sets the stage for the coming of Jesus. There we see God has not given up on this failed attempt to reconcile humanity. God has found a way to fulfill the promises made yet take a completely different, and ultimate course. St. Paul used this understanding when he wrote the letter to the Romans. Jesus is the climax of Israel’s history. It is a story of the strange stumbling of Israel, and in Jesus the ingathering of all people. God has been, is, and will remain faithful to the promises made to us his children. We can take comfort and strength in that knowing how determined God is and how unwilling God is to give up on us.