We see the importance of training your children right - and the long term effect of one event! There’s a story behind the story. And over the next several hundred years that is exactly what happened! And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:11-18). He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. God is always right! Before we go forward let’s go back to when it began: Here is what God said would happen if they got a king: “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. If we were judging we’d use all sorts of algorithms to determine: was the country at peace or war? did it expand the territories? how about personal wealth - did it increase or decrease? But God uses one metric and only one metric: “he did what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord.” Only ONE thing made them a good king! They feared the Lord! And the same was true for the measure of an evil king: “ he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” By the way that is the same for your life. But these you’ve probably heard of: Asa, Jehoshaphat, Jotham, Hezikiah, Josiah. In fact, if you think really hard you can probably only come up with the name of only one evil king - but we’ll come back to that later. The names of the evil kings of Israel or Judah are not exactly household names. That just a few of the evil kings of Israel. I doubt any (many) of you know these names: Elah, Zimri, Tibni, Ahizah, Athaliah, Shallum. So I landed in the middle of the Kings of the Divided Kingdom and got the title: “5 Good Kings and 33 Bad kings in 208 years.” Several on the campaign asked that I post my notes - so here you go: It’s not often I get assigned topics in foreign countries but I’m in Ataco, El Salvador and the young congregation here is reading through the Bible together this year.
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