Willy Rice | 1 Kings 14:21-28

Well, thank you very much, Dr. Mohler,

for those kind words, a very gracious

introduction. It is an extraordinary

honor to be here. I'm humbled to be

here. I'm humbled to be here in this

office, but I'm also full of great

gratitude for what I see here, a room

full of next generation leaders, a

seminary, an institution that is

faithful to the mission of God and to

the truth of God. And I find my heart

just being overwhelmed with gratitude as

I have been here over the last several

hours. Um I am uh only a few years

younger than your president, which means

simply I have watched his leadership and

ministry most of my ministry as a local

church pastor. I was a young pastor when

he became the president of this seminary

and I watched from afar and prayed and

uh admired him. But I have watched this

institution reclaimed for theological

health. I have watched God's blessing

upon it. And uh as we have both, I

suppose, aged together in different

places and walked our path of ministry

these decades, him now more than three

decades. As the leader of this

institution, I find myself praising God

for what is happening here and for the

future of this institution. This is the

mother seminary of the Southern Baptist

Convention. the Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary. It is unimaginable

to think about the Southern Baptist

Convention without thinking about this

seminary and to think about its

faithfulness again to the truth and to

the mission of God. Well, I'm deeply

grateful and I'm grateful for you here

representing the next generation of

leaders who will go into all walks of

life to serve the Lord and to advance

his kingdom. And uh I invite you to take

your Bible and turn with me to the Old

Testament today to the book of First

Kings to a story from Jewish history,

the kings of Israel. And we learn from

them uh so many lessons of course. Um

and I invite your attention to First

Kings 14. I want to read verse 21 in a

moment down through verse 28. As you're

turning there, I'm thinking of a a sign

I once saw. I was traveling. I think it

was in Turkey or Greece, right in there

around the Mediterranean. Uh, one of

those tours that sometimes pastors do.

And we came to an area that was

something like a tourist area slashflea

market. They had like boos and little

tables set up where they were selling

hats and shirts and all the kinds of

things to American tourists. And there

was a sign nailed to a tree. A sign

nailed to a tree that I loved. It caught

my attention. And the sign read this

genuine

fake watches.

That was the sign which I loved. I

laughed for 15 minutes. Genuine fake

watches.

Because if you're going to buy a fake

watch, you want to know it's a genuine

fake watch. You don't There's nothing

worse than buying a fake watch only to

find that it was not genuine. It was a

fake fake watch. I don't know if they

had a certain committee that inspected

the fake watches to make sure they were

genuine. Part of the ambiance maybe of

visiting some city like New York and

when you buy a watch out of a person's

duffel bag

is, you know, you pay $50 for a Rolex.

It's a lot of fun. You give it to a

present or you wear it maybe and um you

want to know it's a genuine fake watch

though. that it's a genuine fake Rolex

and it'll last for five or six weeks

until it loses time or turns your skin a

certain color and you throw it away. But

I thought of the irony of those words,

the inconsistency of those words, the

nonsensical nature of those words. I

thought there are a lot of genuine fakes

in life. There are a lot of genuine

fakes in the kingdom of God. One an

alterable spiritual truth is this.

Wherever God is working, the devil is

also working. And you know that the

devil creates nothing. Our spiritual foe

has no power to create out of nothing.

God is the creator. But Satan is the

great imitator. He's the great

counterfeitter. He takes what God has

made and shaped and caused and he

creates deception often by means of

imitation. Wherever God is working, the

devil is working. If God is working in a

church, the devil is working as well. of

God is working in your life, the devil

is also hard at work. When God is

working in a movement, the devil is also

working to counterfeit, to imitate that

movement. In Acts 8, when Peter and John

demonstrated the great power of the Holy

Spirit in Samaria, there was Simon the

magician lurking in the shadows, wanting

to buy with silver that power which he

saw displayed in the apostles lives.

There is God working, and there is

lurking in the shadows also the work of

the devil. As you begin a new semester,

in reality, the very reason you're at

this institution is you are beginning a

new chapter in your life. You are

pursuing the vocation for which God has

called you, stepping into a new and

important season in your life. You are

by very nature of this place in a season

of preparation. The question I want you

to consider is this. Will you settle for

something that is a genuine fake? Or

will you pursue with all of your heart

that which is authentic and real and

genuine? There's a story from the kings

of the Old Testament. A story from

Riaboam, the fourth of Judah's kings,

the son of Solomon that I call your

attention to this morning. First Kings

14. And I want to read from verse 21

down through the 28th verse. This is the

word of the Lord. Now, Riaboam,

Solomon's son, reigned in Judah. Riaboam

was 41 years old when he became king. He

reigned 17 years in Jerusalem, the city

where the Lord had chosen from all the

tribes of Israel to put his name.

Riaboam's mother's name was Neymar the

Ammonite. Judah did what was evil in the

Lord's sight. They provoked him to

jealous anger more than all their

ancestors had done with the sins they

committed. They also built for

themselves high places, sacred pillars,

and a sheer upoles on every high hill

and under every green tree. There were

even male cult prostitutes in the land.

They imitated all the detestable

practices of the nations the Lord had

dispossessed before the Israelites. In

the fifth year of King Riaboam, King

Shishak of Egypt went to war against

Jerusalem. He seized the treasuries of

the Lord's temple and the treasuries of

the royal palace. He took everything. He

took all the gold shields that Solomon

had made. King Riaboam made bronze

shields to replace them and committed

them into the care of the captains of

the guards who protected the entrance to

the king's palace. And whenever the king

entered the Lord's temple, the guards

would carry the shields. Then they would

take them back to the armory.

Living God, I pray today as we consider

this ancient story and we search for the

spiritual truth that we might apply to

our lives that you would give us a

hunger for that which is real and

authentic,

not a cheap substitute,

not a genuine fake.

deliver us from that which has affected

so many in religious communities in the

past and even in our own Christian

circles of going through the motions

with a superficial spirituality designed

to impress others even while we

deceive ourselves

and pretend that something is there that

is not. Give us we pray your power, your

blessing and your favor in Jesus name.

Amen.

The kings of Israel are important to

study. There are six books in the Bible

devoted to their history and they

provide lessons of success and failure.

They provide instruction for us and how

we might obey God. And they give insight

into spiritual truths that guide us

still. They are given as all scripture

is for our instruction, our correction,

our reproof, our training. Behind every

crown, there is a character. Behind

every throne, there is a testimony.

Behind every sovereign, there is story.

Each king is a story. And history is not

just his story. In many ways, it's our

story as well. We learn about wise

choices. We learn about foolish ones,

about pride and humility, lessons of

leadership and lessons of failure. We

learn from those who trust in God and

those who forget God and the

consequences that comes from that. I

remind you that the decisions we make

determine the destiny that we will have.

And there was a king named Riaboam whose

example serves as a lesson to all of

those who are entering the next chapter

of their life. All of those who are

aspiring to leadership and influence.

And again, as we consider a new

semester, as we consider a new chapter

in your life, we think about Riaboam in

a time of transition in the nation of

Judah. You know, of course, that Riaboam

is the fourth king. He is the grandson

of David, the son of Solomon. There is

Saul, David, Solomon, and then the baton

is passed to Riaboam. The interesting

thing about transitions is they are a

time of great opportunity. Often they

are accompanied with great excitement.

They're also a time of great

vulnerability. So as you transition into

new chapters in your life, there is both

opportunity and vulnerability. And as

you are preparing to receive the mantels

of leadership that you will receive in

the variety of fields that you will

pursue, you must now determine the

choices that will determine the

trajectory of your life and ministry.

Riaboam's story of course is well known

to the people in the seminary some

thousand years or so before the time of

Christ. The Jewish people flourished in

the land we know as Israel. It was a

land that had been promised to their

ancestors. And now in the fullness of

time under Solomon, they had begun to

prosper in ways that their ancestors

could only have dreamed of. Solomon's

time was marked by incredible splendor,

incredible wealth, incredible power, by

peace. He is said to have been among the

wisest men who ever lived and estimates

of his wealth place him among the

wealthiest men who have ever walked

among the planet. First Kings 10 tells

the story about the queen of Sheba, an

ancient kingdom, perhaps southern Arabia

or modern-day Ethiopia. She visited

Solomon. She came to engage in trade,

but not just trade but to take a full

measure of the great man herself. She

had questions about science, philosophy,

and so forth. And the Bible records that

Solomon answered them all. So much so

that she was amazed. The Bible describes

a kingdom where kings and merchants and

governors from all over the Arabian

world would come and trade. 25 tons of

gold flowed into the kingdom every year.

so much gold that according to first

1 Kings 10 · chapter mention

kings chapter 10 and verse 17, Solomon

made 200 large shields of gold. Each of

them contained 15 pounds of gold.

Someone can run the math on that. There

were 300 smaller shields of gold with

four pounds of gold in each of those.

Now, a shield of gold is not designed

for battle. It's designed for beauty to

demonstrate wealth and opulence and

power. It's a symbol. It's a sign. And

of course, whenever Solomon would bring

them out, perhaps on days of great pomp

and circumstance, it would demonstrate

the blessing and the favor of God that

had fallen upon the land. But upon

Solomon's death, as you know, things

began to change. Even before his death,

tribalism and rivalry had begun to

affect the land. Solomon himself had

drifted spiritually and morally, and one

of his servants, Jeroboam, had fled to

Egypt, waiting for a time when he might

usurp the monarchy and perhaps establish

his own kingdom. Somewhere around 900

years before the time of Christ, Solomon

dies and his son Riaboam becomes the

next king. Many of you are familiar with

the controversy that ensued. Leadership

is about choices. And the higher the

leadership, the harder the choices.

Riaboam faced a leadership choice almost

immediately, one that would define his

reign. And tragically so. When Riaboam

became king, there was a controversy.

And the controversy was over taxes.

Nothing much has changed. The people

wanted a break. Solomon had pursued

great projects of building and expansion

and it had come at a cost. And

apparently by the time Solomon's reign

transitions to Riaboam, there was some

economic hardship. So much so that the

people saw this transition in leadership

as an opportunity to appeal for relief.

They came to Riaboam and asked for a tax

cut.

The Riaboam had to make a choice. To

give the people relief from the burden

and the conscripted labor or just to

pursue full steam ahead the policies

that were in place. So leadership is

about choices and to make good choices

usually need to bring in counselors. So

Rioam brought in two sets of counselors.

Many of you remember the story. The

first set of counselors were those who

were older. They were the counselors who

had advised his father. They were the

men who had been helping to steer the

government for some number of years. The

older men were familiar with the

machines of government and they advised

Riaboam

to listen to the people. They advised

him to speak kindly to them. In fact, in

chapter 12 and verse 7, it says

specifically,

be a servant to the people. If you serve

them, they advised,

they will serve you. Riaboam thought

about it and brought in a second group

of counselors. Now, the second group of

counselors,

these were his boys. These were the guys

he was in fraternity with. These were

the guys he played football with. They

were ambitious young men. And they must

have seen the transition in power as an

opportunity to pursue their own

ambition. This was an opportunity for

them to make their mark as well. And

their advice was exactly the opposite of

the older counselors. They advised

Riaboam to come across as large and in

charge. They advised him to boast that

he was tougher than his father ever was.

That if they thought his father was

tough, they had not seen anything yet.

They were to learn his discipline would

be harsher still. Riaboam, as you know,

listened to the council of his

colleagues, the younger men. announced

in chapter 12 12 and verse1 14. My

father made your yoke heavy. I will add

to your yoke. My father disciplined you

with whips. I will discipline you with

barbed whips. The next verse says

ominously, the king did not listen

to the people. The consequences were

disastrous. Once the king's decision

became known, the 10 tribes to the north

rebelled. Jeroboam who had worked for

Solomon before. He had fled to Egypt,

led the rebellion of the northern

tribes. Riaboam tried to quell the

rebellion, but it was unsuccessful. In

fact, he barely escaped assassination

with his own life. And thus, somewhere

around 930 or so BC, the kingdom of

Israel, the United Tribes, split into

the northern tribes of Israel and the

southern kingdom of Judah. And it is at

this moment that a dream dies. The dream

of a united, blessed and righteous

people who would serve as a prophetic

witness to the nations dies. Now this

doesn't surprise God and his plan is

sovereign. But there is a sense in which

the dream, the aspiration that Abraham

and Moses and David had had and so many

had worked for would come to an end. The

Jewish people would be divided. The

desult the results were disastrous. The

northern kingdom built their own altars

of worship, forever sealing their

rebellion against the house of David in

the Jewish temple. Not one of their

kings, as you know, will ever be

praised. The northern kingdom will last

oh about 200 years. But like a deer that

has been shot and runs for a while, its

fate was sealed. and they will fall to

Assyria and the 10 tribes will disappear

into a fog of history. The southern

kingdom remain loyal to the Davidic

dynasty. They will worship in Jerusalem

but they will never again be a united

kingdom. And yet in some ways

that tragedy

enormous

can be traced back to one fatal

decision. In some sense it's never one

decision. But sometimes there are

decisions so significant and so critical

that the ramifications of them last for

centuries.

And I want to remind you that you never

know what day you're going to make a

decision that may affect the decades of

your life. Your children and children

that are unborn.

Riaboam will reign for 17 years, but the

kingdom never regains its lost power. In

time, they are invaded by the Egyptians.

They have to pay heavy tolls to get the

Egyptians to leave. The Egyptians will

take the massive gold shields that

Solomon had made. To replace them, Riabo

makes bronze shields, an inferior

substitute, probably to carry on the

impression of greatness and grandeur.

Bronze can be shined to look as

brilliant as gold. And most people are

probably fooled.

Most people don't notice the difference

when it glitters in the sun.

But bronze isn't gold.

The gold was gone. And despite the

counterfeit grandeur of Riaboam,

he had traded gold for bronze and the

dream of David for something weak and

inferior.

And so I just stand before you at the

cusp of new chapters

to beg you not to settle for the genuine

fake,

not to be content in your life or your

ministry or your vocation or your work

or your family. to trot out shields of

bronze that may impress the crowds

but that are far inferior to what God

would have for you. Lessons that can be

learned from Riaboam. I'd like to share

a couple quickly. One, when you are

faced with great choices, and I think I

said it a moment ago, leadership is

about choices. The higher the

leadership, you heard me say it, the

harder the choices.

Choose wisely. Number one, choose

wisdom. Choose wisdom. Wisdom is knowing

the right thing to do. Solomon,

Riaboam's father, had compiled an

extensive book known as the book of

proverbs of pathy observational

realities about people, relationships,

choices, and God. He put this book

together and he actually tells us the

purpose to pass along wisdom

for his son. Repeatedly he addresses the

proverbs to his son. The first verses of

the book, verse 8, listen my son to your

father's instruction. Do not neglect or

reject your mother's teaching. 45 times

in the book of Proverbs, he refers to my

son, my son. Now in a general sense, I

am sure that Solomon is addressing

future generations of leaders like the

people in this room and he's speaking my

son in a general sense. But I think he

must have also imagined that he would at

least be speaking specifically to his

own son who would one day become king. I

don't know all about Riaboam or what

went into him becoming king, but surely

Solomon must have wanted them prepared

to take the throne. But when the time

came to choose wisdom, Riaboam made the

wrong choice almost immediately.

Wisdom, as you know, is not a collection

of facts.

It is not an aggregation of knowledge.

It is knowing what to do in a given

moment. Wisdom, simply put, can be this,

making the right choices when you stand

at the fork in the road. I've known

people with great knowledge who lacked

wisdom. I've known people who never had

the opportunity to learn. as you learn

in this great institution and yet they

were simple people but they had great

wisdom. The Bible tells us the fear of

God is the beginning of wisdom. All of

which is to say pursue knowledge but

pursue wisdom. What is the right thing

to do? When Riaboam became the king he

listened to the advice of his counselors

instead of wise counselors who had

worked with his father. He became a

companion of fools.

The companion of fools will suffer harm.

One of the most important decisions you

will make is who you will listen to.

I tell our young people, "Show me your

friends. I will show you your future.

Show me who you're listening to, who

you're reading, who you're watching,

who you're hanging with, and I will show

you where you are headed." If you want

to be wise, you must listen to those who

have gone before you. Honor your father

and mother. The Bible says with good

reason. Listen to those who have taught

you and poured life into you. Do not

forget what you have been told. Riaboam

said, "What would my friends do?"

Instead of asking, "What would the Lord

have me to do?" Choose wisdom and be

careful with what is trendy and popular.

Riaboam chose a contemporary approach.

He chose what his friends thought wise.

Riaboam's contemporaries may have been

in step with the times, but they were

out of step with the truth. It's not

that old people are always right and

young people are always wrong. I'm not

saying that. But I am saying there is a

great wealth in experience. The wise

person listens. He benefits from those

who have wisdom and who have walked the

paths that they now trod. You can learn

a lot by experience. But I will tell you

this, experience is a costly teacher.

It will cost you your most important

commodity, time.

The cheat code, if you want to call it

that, is to listen to those who have

walked the paths before you, who have

gone down the roads and can tell you,

"This is what you will face. This is

what you will see." In a critical moment

in Riaboam's life, he rejected the

wisdom of the elders

and he embraced the wisdom of his

contemporaries.

Choose wisdom. Number two, choose

humility. Choose humility. When faced

with a choice between pride and

humility, it is almost always right to

humble yourself.

God resists the proud.

Some translations, he opposes the proud.

That's a frightening thing. By the way,

when God sees pride,

self-sufficiency, arrogance, when he

sees pride,

he opposes it. Now, let me help you with

something. You don't want God opposing

you.

It's not going to go well.

He gives grace to the humble. Does

anyone here need grace? Of course we do.

We need great grace. Who gets grace?

Those who are humble.

Humility, as you know, is not self-pity

or self-degradation. It's acknowledging

the important of God and others. It is

acknowledging that there are things I do

not know

and things I cannot see. It is

acknowledging that I cannot control

everything. It is understanding that I

am not the big deal. God is.

God's not interested in building your

platform. He's looking for people who

will build a platform for his glory.

Humility is honoring God and knowing he

is the one who deserves all glory.

Riaboam made a big deal of himself. He

boasted, did he not, of his strength and

his greatness when the truth is he had

never accomplished anything close to his

father. Compare that if you want to with

how Solomon acted as a young man when

God came to him and gave him a choice

and a divine encounter. I will do

anything for you. What is it you want me

to do for you? Now, I'm not saying God

gives us exactly that same proposition.

He loves most of us. He loves all of us

much too much to give us anything that

we ask.

But in a sense, he asks us that. What is

it you want me to give you? What do you

really want and need in your life? And

what did Solomon do as a young man?

I need wisdom.

That's humility.

In other words, as a young leader, he

said, "I don't know everything I need to

know.

I don't understand everything I need to

understand."

So, don't worry about the money and the

glory and all of that. if I could just

gain wisdom and the Bible tells us God

was pleased with that

why are you here

it must not simply be for some kind of

certification that is a value I suppose

in a way it's a very great value some

validation there there's a reason for

that but I pray that the greatest reason

you are in this room and on this

seminary and on this campus is God I

need wisdom wisdom. I can't imagine you

would be here if you weren't saying

that. So, I want you to lean into that.

That's my encouragement to you at the

beginning of a new semester. Just remind

yourself,

I don't know everything I need to know.

I haven't learned everything I need to

learn. I don't know everything I need to

know to do the next thing that God has

in the next chapter of my life. So, oh

God, give me wisdom. Riaboam did not

pray for that. Everyone knows about the

sinking of the Titanic in 1912. I

suppose it is not only one of the

greatest stories that has been told. It

is probably the most common sermon

illustration that preachers have ever

used. Everyone knows about the pride,

the arrogance, the avarice, and how the

ship that couldn't sink was in fact

sunk. But it was interesting to me that

as familiar as we are all with the

story, a new documentary a few years ago

told a different story. It was the story

of a submarine

in 2023 that imploded and it imploded on

a trip to see the Titanic. It tells a

story of a brilliant and successful CEO,

a brilliant man named Stockton Rush, the

head of Ocean Gate. He helped develop a

technology and dreamed of transporting

wealthy tourists to see the wreckage of

Titanic for themselves. And he took

several trips. And yet his staff and

scientists warned him that he was

cutting corners that he was ignoring

some of the the engineering flaws in his

design. But he would not hear it. He did

not believe he could make such a

mistake. He became focused to the point

of obsession over the great shipwreck

and he forgot the lessons of the

shipwreck. And on 2000 in 2023 on the

submarine with tourists on board, it

imploded and killed them all. And the

name of the submarine, Titan.

Titan. We do not learn.

That's

the course of human history. We ignore

the lessons right in front of us. Choose

humility. CS Lewis said, "Pride is a

spiritual cancer. It eats up the

possibility of love, contentment, or

even common sense. Choose wisdom, choose

humility, choose service. Did you see

what the older counselor said to him? I

find this fascinating for those of you

who aspire to be leaders. What a

leadership

lesson this is. First Kings 12:7, "If

1 Kings 12:7

you will be a servant to this people and

serve them," he said this to the king,

if you will respond by speaking kind

words to them,

they will be your servants forever. Is

that not a leadership lesson? If you

would use this opportunity for

leadership to serve the people,

they will serve you.

Isn't that what our Lord taught us? we

have not come to be served but to serve.

That the first rule of leadership is to

serve others. He could have listened and

served but he ignored and he demanded

that people serve him and instead of

serving others he saw leadership as an

opportunity to use others. If you want

to lead people win their hearts. That is

what my pastor Bill Anderson told me

when at 20 years old too soon too soon.

20 years old I took my first church as a

pastor 50 people in Dora Alabama and I

asked Dr. Anderson, what's one final

lesson you want to give me? He said, win

their hearts.

And I said, what does that mean? He

said, love them. And he gave me some

ways to do that. Demonstrate that you

love those people. And if you love them,

they will follow you. You can lead them.

Serve them. Lastly, I would simply say

this.

Choose God. It was said of Riaboam. He

did what was evil because he did not

determine in his heart to seek the Lord.

Ultimately, Riaboam's

tragedy is that he did not seek God. He

was arrogant.

He was

insolent. He ignored the advice, the

wisdom of others. He did not seek the

Lord. There's no evidence in his life

that he sought God. Look at his father,

David and Solomon. for all their flaws.

They sought the Lord throughout their

life at different times. Every time

David was confronted, and he did fail

multiple times, but when he was

confronted, you'll notice he always

repented. He listened. He could humble

himself and be corrected. Not so Riable.

Shields of bronze are shields of gold.

You can trot them out and you can

impress the crowds.

But shields of gold,

only God can produce those. God's

blessing, God's favor. I want you to

have the real thing in your life.

I want you to be authentic.

I want you to have God's power and his

favor and his blessing on your marriage,

on your life, on your vocation, and on

your work. So, I beg you, do not take

the shortcut. Do not simply

trot out what glitters so that the

crowds will be impressed and the people

will be odd. It won't last very long. It

won't last very long. Oh, they'll be

impressed. It doesn't matter. You know

what matters? That you have God's

blessing and grace upon your life. So,

at the beginning of this semester,

choose wisdom,

choose humility, choose service. Who

will you serve? And choose God. And may

his grace and blessing rest upon you and

give you shields of gold in your life

and in your work

for his glory. Living God, I do pray

this. I pray for these young people who

represent unimaginable potential,

unimaginable giftedness. You will call

them into all walks of life

and uh into your work in leading your

churches.

There are those assembled here who will

preach sermons and write books and build

businesses.

And God, how we need them, how your

kingdom needs them, how this nation

needs them, how your churches need them.

Lord, we pray that you will use them.

that you will call them, that you will

fill them with your Holy Spirit, that

they will be grounded upon your truth,

that the lessons they learn here will

guide them, ground them all the days of

their life. Father, I pray that you

would give us a hunger for that which is

more than shiny

and contemporary.

Give us a hunger for that which is

grounded and true and lasting and of

real value.

Lord, may it be so in our lives. May it

be so in our work for your great glory.

We pray this in the name of our Lord

Jesus. Amen.