GOD'S WAY OR MY WAY?
Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has to answer that question for himself. At the moment of salvation, the believer has two natures ... a sin nature which he inherited from Adam at the point of physical birth and a new nature that is given to him when he is born spiritually. These two natures are at war with one another throughout the lifetime of the believer, and he must learn to exercise his free will regarding which nature will controlhis thoughts and actions. The result of his decisions will be blessing if he is obedient by learning to follow God's will for his life or discipline from the Lord if he knowingly disregards God's sovereign will, His permissive will or His overruling will.
Here are a few examples from God's Word to illustrate the results of doing things God's way versus man's way:
ABRAHAM AND SAKAH...
When Abraham was 75 years old, God promised to make a great nation of him. (Genesis 12:1-3) Ten years went by, and Sarah had no child, so Abraham took her bad advice and Ishmael was born of Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid. That was not God's way, and Ishmael was not the son of promise.
Thirteen years later. God appeared to Abraham and confirmed His promise to make a great nation of him. This time Abraham believed the Lord, and the sign of circumcision became a covenant between them.
Isaac, the promised heir, was born when Abraham was 100 years old, and God's way was finally accomplished in the lives of Abraham and Sarah.
ISAAC AND REBEKAH...
Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah and the Lord confirmed the Abrahamic covenant with Isaac. Nineteen years went by, and they had no children. Isaac prayed for a son, and Rebekah conceived twin sons. Before they were born, the Lord told Rebekah that the eldest son, Esau, would serve the younger son, Jacob. (Genesis 25:20-23)
As the boys grew to manhood, Esau became Isaac's favorite, but Rebekah preferred Jacob. (Genesis 25:27,28) God's way was to have Jacob receive the blessings of the firstborn, but Isaac planned to give them to his eldest son Esau. When Rebekah heard of her husband's plan for Esau, she devised a scheme of her own, and caused Jacob to deceive his father by making him believe he was Esau. As a result, Isaac blessed Jacob, and bestowed upon him all the blessings of the firstborn. When Esau found out, he decided to kill his brother after their father died, so Rebekah sent Jacob to her brother Laban in Haran and said she would send for him later. (Genesis 27:41-45) That was the last time Rebekah ever saw Jacob, as she died while he was in Haran.
JACOB AND RACHEL...
On his way to uncle Laban's house, the Lord appeared to Jacob in a dream one night and confirmed the Abrahamic covenant with him. (Genesis 28:11-15)
Laban had two daughters called Leah and Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel, and Laban promised to give her to Jacob if he would work for him for seven years; however, Laban deceived Jacob on his wedding night and gave him his eldest daughter Leah instead and then promised to also give Rachel to him if he would work another seven years, and he agreed. Leah bore eight sons for Jacob but Rachel was barren. When Rachel demanded that Jacob give her a son, he became angry instead of asking the Lord about it as his father Isaac had done; however, the Lord gave Rachel a son, and they called him Joseph.
During the next twenty years Jacob worked for Laban, and many sons and daughters were born to him ... not only the ten sons from Laban's two daughters, but also two from their handmaids Bilhah and Zilpah, making a total of 12 sons who would be the patriarchs of the nation that would later be called Israel. (Genesis 35:22b-26) The Lord never sanctioned a man having more than one wife, but this was His permissive will in the life of Jacob.
KING SAUL AND THE PROPHET SAMUEL...
When the Children of Israel demanded a king so they could be like all the other nations, God gave them the kind of man they wanted ... a tall, good looking man by the name of Saul who would rule over them for 40 years.
No better Bible teacher or counselor could Saul have had than God's prophet Samuel, but Saul had a free will to choose whether or not he would listen to Samuel and act according to God's way or pursue his own desires, and he always chose his own way. Whenever Samuel confronted Saul and asked why he deliberately disobeyed the Lord's commands, Saul refused to take responsibility for his actions and always blamed others for his own foolish decisions. One of those incidents is found in 1 Samuel 15:1-35.
After Samuel died, Saul did not receive any more direction from the Lord, so when the Philistines were encamped around them and ready to attack, Saul prayed for guidance, but the Lord did not answer his prayers. In desperation, Saul consulted a witch and asked her to bring Samuel up from the grave so he could advise him. The witch had no power to do that, but the Lord raised Samuel up to tell Saul that he and his sons were going to die in battle the next day, and Saul did die a miserable death. (1 Samuel 31:1-13)
1 Chronicles 10:13,14 tells us why Saul died: "So Saul died because of his sin which he committed against the Lord, even against the Word of the Lord which he refused to obey and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to inquire of it and inquired not of the Lord; therefore, the Lord slew him and gave the kingdom to David, the son of Jesse."
KING DAVID...
The Lord called David "a man after God's own heart", because David loved God's Word and, although he committed some grievous sins, he never worshipped idols. During most of his life, David did things God's way, but when it came to women he ignored the revealed will of God and followed his own will.
Regarding rules for kings many years before Israel even had a king, Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 17:14, 15 and 17 some of God's specific rules for kings in the future: "When you come into the land which the Lord your God will give you and shall possess it and live in it, you will say that you will set a king over you so you can be like all the other nations. The Lord your God shall choose a king for you from among your own people. You may not set a stranger over you. He shall not multiply wives for himself so that his heart will be turned away from Me, nor shall he multiply gold and silver for his own pleasure.''
David disobeyed Moses' words, because he desired many wives who bore children for him. His first six sons were born of six different wives while he lived in Hebron where he reigned seven and a half years, and the next four were born of Bathsheba during the thirty-three years he ruled in Jerusalem. Before David married Bathsheba, he had nine sons by some of his other wives and concubines, (see 1 Chronicles 3:1-9 and 2 Samuel 3:2-5 and 5:13-16)
By His permissive will, the Lord did not prevent David from having all those women, but some of the sons which they bore became a tragic disappointment to David, and two of them even attempted to replace their father as king ... Absalom in chapter 15 of 2 Samuel and Adonijah in 1 Kings 1:5-53. Both of those sons failed miserably, and the Lord's directive will prevailed, because 1 Chronicles 22:9,10 tell us that Solomon was to be the next king of Israel.
KING SOLOMON...
Solomon was the last king over the 12-tribe kingdom. The Lord promised to be with Solomon and his descendants if he would walk in His ways. (1 Kings 11:38,39) Solomon loved the Lord, and when the Lord came to him in a dream and told him to ask for anything he desired, Solomon asked for wisdom to rule God's people, and the request was pleasing to the Lord.
Solomon ruled well during his first years as king, and his fame, wisdom and wealth were greater than any king of any nation that had been before him. However, contrary to the clear command of God in Deuteronomy 17:14,15 and 17, Solomon decided to go his own way, and he followed his father's example of collecting many wives and concubines for himself. In fact, he had 700 wives and 200 concubines, and, just as the Lord had warned, when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away from the Lord, and he even bowed down to their idols.
Because of Solomon's idolatry, the Lord became very angry with him, and when his son Rehoboam became king. God had things His way and divided the kingdom into two separate nations.
JEROBOAM...
Jeroboam was an industrious young man whom Solomon made ruler over the house of Joseph. (1 Kings 11:28) Later, the Lord used Jeroboam as an adversary to Solomon, because of Solomon's acts of idolatry in his old age.
One day when Jeroboam was leaving Jerusalem, God's prophet Ahijah met him, and when they were alone in a field outside the city, Ahijah tore the new garment he was wearing and said to Jeroboam, "Take ten pieces of this garment for yourself, because the Lord has said He will take ten of the tribes of Israel from Rehoboam, son of Solomon, and give them to you to rule, because they have forsaken the Lord and worshipped idols. If you will walk in God's ways as David did. He will be with you, and your descendants will also rule after you." (1 Kings 11:29-38)
When Solomon heard about it, he tried to find a way to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam escaped into Egypt where he remained until the death of Solomon. (1 Kings 11:40)
After Solomon's son Rehoboam became king, he rejected the advice of the men who had served his father and listened to the young men with whom he had grown up. He made very foolish decisions that caused the men of the 10 tribes to reject his authority, and they sent for Jeroboam and made him their king.
Instead of believing God's Word, Jeroboam became afraid that the people would leave him and go back to Jerusalem to worship the Lord, so he made two golden calves for them to worship. He placed one in the northern city of Dan and the other in Beersheba in the southern part of Israel, and told the people they could worship the golden calves and not have to travel to Jerusalem on the feast days. (1 Kings 12:26-33) Then he ordained men of the lowest rank to be priests in those two places of worship. 2 Kings 17:23 records how Jeroboam drove Israel away from following the Lord when he made them worship the idols, and that resulted in the northern kingdom being taken into Assyrian captivity. After that, whenever Jeroboam's name is mentioned in the scriptures we find the words, "the man who made Israel sin". When he tried to separate Israel from Jerusalem, Jeroboam wasn't trying to separate them from the Lord, but his golden calves were designed to be mere images of the God who brought them out of the land of Egypt. As a result, their worship became a mixture of Judaism and paganism.
Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom called Israel. In pages 958 and 959 of Unger's Bible Dictionary, there is a good deal of information regarding the worship of the Samaritans who were a mixture of Israelites who had been left in the land when the nation went into captivity and some other races of people who had been placed in the land by ancient Assyrian kings.
2 Kings 17:24-41 gives details of how one of those kings repopulated the land of Israel after destroying their cities. We also are told how the people were taught by a Jewish priest who instructed them to reject the ways of the Lord by mixing faith in Him with their idolatry.
In choosing his own way rather than following God'sdirection, we see that during his 22-year reign, Jeroboam's government exhibited one major purpose ... to place a barrier against the reunion of the twelve tribes. Jeroboam became a slave and a victim to that desire, and although he thought the barrier he raised would accomplish his purpose, it only served to reveal his great weakness.
GOD'S WAYS ARE ALWAYS BETTER THAN MAN'S WAYS! (Isaiah 55:8,9)
Written by Lois Delnay 10/16/2009
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